Deborah Butler Gallery Visit

On Friday 22 March, a number of art students had the unique opportunity to take part in a gallery visit and lecture with Deborah Butler, an internationally acclaimed artist based at her gallery here in Liverpool.

Students were given the opportunity to visit her gallery and have a tour in her studio, providing a unique visit for the students as well as an essential part of their enrichment and careers guidance. Students enjoyed the opportunity to tour her gallery and studio and interview her about her working practice and gallery business. This was a rare opportunity to talk and work first hand with an artist at their gallery.

Deborah’s paintings explore coastal and urban landscape and she works on range of scales. Her current exhibition is based on coastlines from her visits to Wales, many of our students have visited and made similar journeys to those featured in her paintings, a real opportunity to see how travel can inspire and create Art. Many of our students have selected to join our Arts and Ambassadors Programme and experiences like this not only offer new opportunities for those on the visit but will also prove beneficial to all our pupils as they share experiences from today’s visit with their peers.

Students will be creating their own art work inspired by our visit.

Arts Critique on our visit from our students:

‘I found the visit to be wholly useful and beneficial to me and my aspirations in the Arts industry as a career. Her gallery was a beautiful, cohesive display and I found myself being drawn to the numerous paintings, intrigued by the intricate details and layering.’ Lucy M

‘I really enjoyed the trip to Deborah Butler’s Gallery as it gave an insight into life as an artist and how to run a gallery. I loved how colourful her paintings were, they were unique and unlike anything I’d seen before’ Katy R.

‘The trip to Deborah Butler Gallery was interesting, inspiring and very useful to us as young artists. We are very grateful to Deborah for taking the time to talk to us about her journey as an artist and what has shaped her art. Thank you, Deborah and Mrs Hardisty for organizing this. ‘Amelia S.

‘The gallery was an eye opening experience, which allowed us to explore the reality of life as an artist. I enjoyed the abstract art in the gallery and found it colourful and innovative.’ Gabby M

‘We visited Deborah Butler Gallery and got to talk to the artist herself about her work and experiences, we learnt so much from how to run a gallery business to her inspiration and painting methods- it was a great experience.’ Sean W

‘I found Deborah’s work breathtaking with the textures and colour and how she captures the landscape, keeping the mood of the location intact. I have always wondered how you go about selling your own work as your main income and setting up a business; she answered many of my questions.’ Heather C

You can view this exhibition at her gallery: Deborah Butler Gallery, Greenbank Road, Liverpool, L18 1HN

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Alice

Lost in a mad wonderland, unfamiliar to the book, Alice has to find her way home meeting many wild creatures including a table of crazy video game characters. Will she find her way home in time before the queen catches her? (Hannah T, Ruby K)

What a week the Prep and Middle Schools have had preparing for their performance of ‘ALICE’. This years’ show didn’t disappoint with this energetic, colourful and quirky take on the traditional story. From the Hatter and the Hare, to misfits, rapping Dum and Dees and a yoga mad Caterpillar the show was everything it promised to be!

It was great to see our Year 8’s end their run in these shows on such a high and welcome in so much new and promising talent for the future!

We are extremely proud of all the pupils for their hard work in putting this production together. The collaborative work of our Prep School and Middle School pupils really does embed our LC+ Curriculum and demonstrates working with exceptional Purpose, Passion and Challenge.

Enjoy a well-deserved rest and here’s to the next one!

Miss Clark

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Liverpool College win the Unilever Bright Future Competition 2019

Since our visit to the Unilever Factory in Port Sunlight in November, two selected teams of the Year 9 Wilton Scholars have been working on a project set by the multi-national corporation Unilever as part of their ‘Bright Futures’ programme. We could choose to do one (or more of three tasks) to help Unilever design a new product. The tasks were: Design a product that lowers water usage and the energy used to heat water; to make a plastic free product or to make a sustainable product to support the local community. To get some inspiration, we visited the Unilever factory in November. In the factory, we looked at packaging, processing, consumer technical insight, digital R&D and formulation. This led us to creating our product.

On Thursday 21 March, we were invited back to present our projects to judges from the Unilever Factory, alongside around 30 other teams, all with their own original and innovative ideas. The main objective of this experience was to inspire the younger generation to get involved in the STEM subjects. There were two groups; Hygienegg (Emily T., Lucy C. and Ethan F.) and Glow Up (Amelia Y., Amelia R., Emily C., Seif Y. and Agsith R.). Hygienegg attempted to make a plastic free product that minimised water usage and Glow Up attempted to make a plastic free, sustainable product.

Glow Up planned and thought about a skin/hair product that was one hundred percent plastic free and we decided on cork. Cork is naturally hydrophobic, mould resistant and lightweight, making it perfect for a bathroom product. We also decided on an all-natural body scrub for our starting product, naming it, 'Glow up,' as after you have scrubbed yourself with it, it will leave you with a radiant glow. Lucy C, Emily T and Ethan F created our product called  Hygienegg. It consisted of a box of six ‘eggs’ which theoretically contained your whole body and hair wash for when you shower. In the products the shampoo, conditioner and body wash was all in one little capsule. The inner ‘yolk’ contained the conditioning shampoo and the outer white was the body wash. We think our product was creative and exciting and would capture people attention.

Each group presented to six separate pairs of adjudicators- each specialising in their own areas of expertise. We focused on the issues of: plastic in the modern world, our packaging, formulation, finance and future developments. It brought our entrepreneurial sides out!

After lunch, we had the awards ceremony. They started with the five category awards for: innovation, communication, technical, sustainability and finally the consumer award. They then moved on to the ranked awards, with Archbishop Blanche in 3^rd place, Woodchurch team 1 in 2^nd place and Glow Up (Liverpool College team 2) in 1^st place. It was such an amazing feeling to know that our product was recognised and now we are looking forward to the amount of opportunities we will have with Unilever developing our product and further STEM national competitions.

We would like to thank The Wilton Trust for funding us to go on these brilliant trips and providing us with these great opportunities, particularly to Mr Cartwright for mentoring us between November and March and to Mrs Doran for organising our visit to Unilever and entries to the competition. We cannot wait for what will come next! We all really enjoyed the day, and look forward to more events with Glow Up and Hygienegg!

The Year 9 Wilton Scholars Team

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Art on Tour with Leonardo da Vinci

Last Thursday, 23 Year 8 pupils went to visit the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition in the Walker Art Gallery in their activities session: Art on Tour. They viewed approximately 30 of his sketches and learnt about his life. Pupils then completed art work based on the exhibition.

Art work by Chloe P and Ephraim C.

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Y12 Academic Conference

On Friday 15 March, Y12 More Able students participated in their first Academic Conference. Through a series of intellectual yet highly engaging academic lectures, the event encourages bright, ambitious students to readily manipulate abstract ideas and make connections across school subject areas. This day, organised by Mrs Doran, was designed to specifically target the development of the capabilities of higher attaining students by adding depth, complexity and richness to their learning. Experienced, gifted educators stretched and challenged the students’ thinking using a multi-media and inter-disciplinary approach. Highly able students were also able to spend the day with like-minded youngsters all keen to reach the ceiling of their ability and share ideas. The students listened to four academic lectures, presented by lecturers from top universities, including Oxford University.

The Lectures:

‘What Dreams May Come?’ – Julie Arliss examining claims about the afterlife. What is the ultimate nature of reality? Is there anything more to life than this?

'Holocaust, Hitler and Historiography: How the Writing of History affects the World Today’ – Professor Tom Greggs. This lecture looked at the role of history writing today. Looking at examples from the second world war onwards, this interactive session encouraged students to examine what it means to say, ‘Who controls the past controls the future and who controls the present controls the past.’

‘The Psychology of Outstanding Achievement’ – Dr. Christopher O’Neill. This session examined the hard evidence of what really produces a life of outstanding achievement. A fascinating interactive examination of what really makes a difference.

‘Rock in 11 Dimensions: Where Physics and Guitars Collide’ – Dr. Mark Lewney. This mind-expanding and ear-stimulating lecture addressed some of the biggest ideas in contemporary science: Big Bang; and how the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – the biggest experiment ever built – let us peek into extra dimensions.

Students also participated in a live debate, with students contributing to the BIG Debate and practising their public speaking, persuasive language skills and demonstrating their ability to think on their feet. The debate was: “This house believes that the monarchy should be abolished”.

Mrs Doran

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Sri Lankan Careers Visit

We were very proud to welcome visitors from the Sri Lankan National Education Commission and the British Council to the College this week. The visitors came to find out about our careers provision and they were most impressed with our pupils who spoke very eloquently about their experiences. One guest commented that our young people and programme was truly inspiring!

The delegates were in the UK to work on a project based around appraisal of National Policy Proposals for School Based Career Guidance.

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