Regent High School at Lumiere London

The inaugural Lumiere London festival took place in King's Cross and the West End last weekend, and Regent High School students were a part of it.

In November two of our Year 7 PE classes worked with artists Cleary Connolly.  The brief was for the Year 7 students to engage in some gymnastics and dance activities during one of their PE lessons, that would be filmed by the artists and used as source material for the development of the installation.  Blocks replicating the shapes of the German Gymnasium were brought into our Activities Studio, and the students performed in, on and around the blocks while they were filmed by the artists.  The shapes created by the students were then turned into the beautiful figures that were projected onto the side of the German Gymnasium, each comprising 13 dots.

During the afternoon, Reception pupils from the new King’s Cross Academy came to Regent High School to work with Cleary Connolly to develop more material for the installation.

We were absolutely thrilled to work with Cleary Connolly and Artichoke on ‘Joining the Dots’.  Our Year 7 students enjoyed working with the artists, and the students’ sense of pride and excitement at being introduced to the piece by Denis Connolly, one half of Cleary Connolly, on the opening night of the Lumiere Festival - pictured below - was evident.  It was a perfect way of engaging with London’s festival of light, and introducing our newest students to site-specific installation art.

You can hear artist Denis Connolly speaking about 'Joining the Dots' on the BBC Radio 4 Front Row programme.

Image by Denis Connolly.