“The Festival of the Arts this year includes not only Visual Arts & Design but Performing Arts. It is a celebration of our students’ artistic expression in a presentation of 2D and 3D work. In communicating their ideas through the medium of art, our students develop creative thinking skills and an appreciation for the arts. The cross-curricular connections between their units of inquiry, mathematics, literacy, and science can be seen in the artwork. The collaborative work done by our students helped in the development of their Approaches To Learning when they had to practise their self-management skills, work on cooperating with each other, and being open-minded about accepting the ideas of others. The result has been an explosion of creativity in some great pieces of art that are now ready for the silent auction to support The Food Bank Singapore.”
Ms. Hima Venkateswaran, ISS Visual Arts and Design Teacher

Our annual Paterson Arts Exhibition took a different form this year! Instead of focusing solely on Visual Arts & Design, our Arts, Drama, and Music teachers banded together to create the“Festival of the Arts”, an explosion of artistic expression and creativity that radiated through the whole Paterson campus. Not only was there a display of student artwork, our students also put on short skits and musical performances at the festival.

For our student artwork, our students designed and created their own works of art and a multidisciplinary approach allowed them to draw links between art, mathematics, literacy, science, and more. For example, our Grade 5s tried a textile art known as “Shibori”, a Japanese manual resist dyeing technique, which produces geometric patterns on fabric. They not only made connections between art and mathematics, Shibori also allowed them to reflect on possible life lessons. A Grade 5 student concluded that a life lesson learned from Shibori was that: “There is no right, wrong, best, worst in art. Be unique. Be you.” These works of art and more were proudly displayed around campus and, if you participated in our silent auction, perhaps soon they will be adorning your walls! Our students’ abilities were not only showcased and stretched but, through the silent auction, the proceeds of which were donated to The Food Bank Singapore, our students were also shown how the work they do can contribute to the wider community.

Our students also collaborated to come up with original skits and performances. The titles of the skits performed include: Stranger Girls, Undertale, School Bully, Super Mario Brothers, Dreamy Night, and Animaji. Our students were effective and open-minded team players in the development of these skits, working together to develop the script and overall direction of the skit. They took some risks with these performances, and we are glad to see them pay off with a strong show of support and encore performances scheduled. There were also musical performances from the school choir and a reprise of our Middle School Drama students’ performances from MusicFest@SGH. The choir performances were backed by ISS parents, who played the musical accompaniment on instruments such as the keyboard and flute. What a great show of close-knit community we have here at ISS, with parents pitching in when help is needed.

Thanks and well done to all Elementary and Middle School students for their enthusiastic participation and excellent showing, as well as our teachers for organising this event, especially Mr. Bruno Alen-Lebon, who guided our Middle School Drama students’ performances; Ms. Hima Venkateswaran and Ms. Jane Taylor who oversaw the Elementary and Middle School art pieces respectively; Ms. Janienne Vaughan, our choir conductor; and Ms. Marnie Hurst, our music teacher. Last of all, we’d like to say a big thank you to all parents, family members, and guardians – especially the parents who assisted in the musical accompaniment – for coming down and filling this day with love and support from the community.