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Our Open days are: Thursday 24th October 2024; 4.00pm-6.00pm, Thursday 14th November 2024; 1.00pm-3.00pm and 4.00pm-6.00pm and Friday 15th November 2024; 9.30am - 10.30am.

  Home» School Life » Arts and Culture

Arts and Culture at Wreay

We are proud to deliver a wide-ranging and high quality arts curriculum, encompassing visual arts, music, drama and literature. In line with this, we hold a Music Mark award and we are currently working to achieve recognition for the Arts Council of England's Artsmark award. 

We work closely with:

Melodic Minor Choir

The Melodic Minor Choir formed in 2014 and through their continued hard work and dedication, they have continued to achieve recognition and great success.  They have won the Carlisle & District Music and Drama Festival Junior School Choir Category for four consecutive years, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2023. We say consecutive because two of those years were wiped out by the pandemic and unfortunately the festival was unable to take place for choir categories.  

Over the years, our choir have been invited to perform at various concerts in the locality, at educational and health conferences, for The Bishop of Carlisle at Rose Castle and in September 2019, for The Right Honourable Gavin Williamson, the then Secretary of State for Education, who wrote to the school following his visit saying:

 “Hearing the Melodic Minors sing was an unforgettable experience.”

Some of the children have enjoyed the experience of singing in the Melodic Minor Choir so much that they have gone on to enjoy other choir projects beyond the school day and beyond their time at Wreay School.  You may have seen the videos on Youtube of The Harmonic Minor Choir filmed singing here in St Mary’s Church back in 2018 and also their charity fundraiser single released during lockdown, in May 2020 to raise funds for the NHS.  We are proud to say that both projects were largely Wreay School pupils past and present at that time. 

Our choir's focus ultimately IS about developing high quality singing, but equally it is about: 

  • boosting self-confidence, 
  • empowering children to express themselves, 
  • helping children to enjoy solo opportunities as well as 
  • sharing in laughter and fun working alongside friends as part of this special team.

Why Art Education?

At Wreay we value and celebrate art because:

  • Art education brings all children together and offers a language that transcends race, language, age, and ability.
  • The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution, that there are many ways to see and interpret the world, and that the limits of language do not define the limits of our cognition.
  • The arts help children find other ways of expressing their thoughts and feelings beyond the traditional.
  • One of the first things we did as human beings, was to draw and paint...tens of thousands of years ago. It is still one of the first things that we do when we are babies. It is human nature.
  • Art can assist with, and enhance, all subjects; English, Maths and Science, even PE.
  • At Wreay, however, we also believe that Art should be taught for Art's sake. Hence we work closely with artists who come into school to work with each class, introducing children to a variety of aspects of art, but commonly, to see and to draw, to think and to paint, and to have ideas and to make.

Developmental benefits of Art Education are:

  • language development,
  • decision making,
  • problem-solving,
  • critical-thinking,
  • visual learning,
  • inventiveness,
  • creativity,
  • empathy and social skills,
  • cultural awareness

Many research studies have shown that there is also improved academic performance.