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With the BAFTAs fresh in everyone’s mind, QE’s stars of the small screen have been picking up their own awards for their work to help fellow pupils.

In a first for the School, QE’s team of peer mentors this year produced a series of short videos to share their wisdom and experience with younger pupils, providing useful tips and advice on topics ranging from coping with stress to how to use a homework diary.

To reward these senior pupils’ talent and commitment, the best of their work was recognised in an informal awards ceremony, when a number of prizes were awarded.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “Over the years, our teams of peer mentors have made, and continue to make, a great contribution as a much-valued part of the wider support network at the School. Both mentors and mentees routinely take a lot away from these relationships.

“There was great creativity and skill on display in these bite-sized videos, which communicated some very important and insightful messages. Everyone involved with any of the videos should be proud of their efforts and the way they are helping to support others.”

The peer videos project was organised by Head of Extra-curricular Enrichment Rebecca Grundy and Head of Year 10 Micah King, with the explicit purpose of widening the number of pupils who could benefit from the guidance of peer mentors. The peer mentors began working on their films in November, each selecting a topic that had been identified as a need for pupils within the School, and then teamed up to script, film and edit their videos.

“The boys worked incredibly hard together to produce such high-quality videos, and one particular joy of this project was watching older and younger peer mentors collaborate to share their wisdom with our QE community,” said Mr King. “Each team had to create project proposals and submit multiple drafts of their videos – and  the end results speak for themselves: they are an excellent collection of videos and the boys are a credit to the School.”

• The award for best film overall went to the Year 13 team of Paul Ofordu, Miguel Nieves, Manomay Lala-Raykar and Aadarsh Khimasia, which Paul and Manomay directed, with Paul additionally producing and editing the video, Managing Stress and Anxiety. Paul also took the best actor award for his role in the three-minute production (pictured top). To combat stress, they recommended meditation, journalling, controlling one’s own social media use, sleep and healthy eating. The judges’ comments were: “This film combined superb advice, with great editing, cinematography, acting and presenting. The Year 13 producers of this film are a credit to this school, and their film epitomises the wonderful help, wisdom and guidance they have given to QE. “The judges also commented that: “Paul is a great role model for students on camera. His acting skills are compelling, while he presents great advice wonderfully.”
• Adam Khaliq and Rudra Thakkar, both of Year 12, won the award for best cinematography with their film, Making friends at QE. “This award was given in recognition of the joy that was captured on film,” the judges wrote. “This advice guide would cheer and support students who are struggling, and the filming was creative and adventurous.”
• The best editing award went to Shuaib Adam, of Year 11, whose film was entitled How to prepare a study space at home. The citation for this was: “When we first watched this, Ms Grundy remarked that you could imagine seeing this on the BBC. Superb use of speed up/slowed down footage, great voiceovers and text overlay. A masterful piece of editing.”
• The best producer award went jointly to the Year 12 pair of Haipei Jiang and Nivain  Goonasekera, for How to manage your homework. It was, the judges wrote, an “Excellent stop motion video, which combined great advice with a fun, entertaining and wonderfully produced guide.”
• Darren Lee, of Year 11, was also recognised for his graphic design, with the judges commenting that this work was: “Creative and professional. Darren’s graphic design is outstanding, managing to maintain the School’s branding in his banner, while demonstrating his own creativity in the buttons he designed.”

All the videos are in the support and advice section of eQE, the School’s e-platform and learning platform.

A performance of Othello by the School’s senior actors has been roundly praised by a representative of the Shakespeare Schools Festival.

The production of the tragedy, performed during the SSF at the Arts Depot in Finchley and then again in School to Year 11, was a central part of the inaugural QE Shakespeare Festival. This week-long celebration of the works of England’s greatest playwright was brought to an end by an “inspiring” and “hugely entertaining” lecture to Year 10 from John Mullan, a professor of English at University College London.

In her written appraisal of the performance addressed to the cast of 18 boys from Years 9–13, Lisa Ors, of the SSF, said: “Congratulations on a dramatic, dynamic and deadly production. Staging a Shakespeare play in these changing times takes extra courage, tenacity, and creativity. You should be incredibly proud of what you and your teachers have achieved.”

Praising their “brilliant evening of theatre”, she singled out various elements, such as: their use of space and the “wonderful stage pictures” they created “including the opening scene on a motorbike”; the “effective use” of lighting and sound; their “fantastic” characterisation; their use of gesture, and their deployment of “varied vocal qualities to convey emotion with clarity”.

QE’s Othello was also lauded by the School’s Assistant Head (Pupil Involvement), Crispin Bonham-Carter, whose own background is as a well-known professional actor and theatre director.

“Our boys’ performance of Othello at the Arts Depot and again at School was a dark journey into the psychology of jealousy and revenge.  Patrick Bivol [Year 11] played Iago with a hands-in-pockets insouciance that made his lies and plotting deliciously painful to watch, while Sultan Khokhar [Year 13] gave the Moor [Othello himself] a calm nobility as he met his tragic downfall.

“The protagonists were brilliantly supported by one of the strongest ensembles we’ve seen in QE drama. Keiaron Joseph [Year 11] was particularly moving as the faithful Desdemona, and Augie Bickers [Year 10] set new standards in drunk acting as the reputationally challenged Cassio.

“This was a genuinely entertaining piece of theatre and is a great reflection of the progress that drama here has made in recent years. Our resident director, Gavin Molloy, treats the boys as professionals, and this cast should be extremely proud of themselves.”

In his talk to Year 10, Professor Mullan, Head of Department and The Lord Northcliffe Chair of Modern English Literature at UCL, asked the boys: “What links the following words: assassination, bloodstained, cold-blooded, deafening, fashionable, lonely, undress, vulnerable?”

The answer is, of course, Shakespeare, he said. “He invented nearly 2,000 words never seen before in the English language.”

Professor Mullan is a regular TV and radio broadcaster and a literary journalist; he writes on contemporary fiction for The Guardian and was a judge for the 2009 Man Booker Prize.

Mr Bonham-Carter said: “Professor Mullan was hugely entertaining and made a passionate case for further literature studies, noting, in passing, that his English Literature graduates were going on to the highest-earning jobs of all UCL’s departments…”

“Year 10 listened intently and asked many intelligent questions.”

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “My thanks go to my colleagues and the boys for making our inaugural QE Shakespeare festival a resounding success, with Othello an undoubted highlight and Professor Mullan’s visit constituting a very satisfying conclusion. A perusal of our archives at QE Collections will reveal that the resurgence of drama in recent years picks up on an older tradition of offering high-quality productions here.

“In fact, our connections with the theatre go back to the time of Shakespeare himself, and even a little before that. Court favourite Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who successfully petitioned Queen Elizabeth I for the School’s founding charter, granted in 1573, was an important patron of theatre in Tudor England, supporting his own troupe, Leicester’s Men, and the establishment of the Theatre in Shoreditch, forerunner of London’s famous Globe Theatre.

“As we approach our 450^th anniversary next year, I am very proud to see current Elizabethans take up the mantle of delivering excellence in areas such as drama, oratory and debate.”

• Next up for QE’s thespians is courtroom drama, with a production of Twelve Angry Men planned for the Summer Term.

QE marked LGBT History Month with a string of special activities, including a talk by one of the UK’s leading advocates for inclusion in schools.

Shaun Dellenty, who has been honoured at the National Diversity Awards and was praised by then Prime Minister David Cameron for his work, led a virtual assembly for the Sixth Form, urging the boys to use their voices to advocate for what they believe in.

Other activities during the month included a talk to Years 9 & 10 from the LGBT+ young people’s charity, Just Like Us, as well as a competition, and a quiz run by the School’s LGBTQ-E Society, which was very well attended.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “Shaun’s assembly was an important reminder of the progress that has been made in recent decades, but also an indication that there remains much to be done. At QE, through events such as these, as well as our Personal Development Time programme and the work of our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Ambassadors, we seek to ensure that our School community is a place where all are treated with respect and kindness.”

Shaun Dellenty, who has been named as one of the top 100 most influential LGBT people in the UK, began by noting that not all countries have an LGBT History Month, and that LGBT rights are still very unequal across the globe.

By becoming an ‘upstander’ – one who intervenes on behalf of those who are being attacked or bullied – he had had influence beyond his expectations, with a life journey that had taken him all the way to Downing Street. He told the boys he hoped the boys would reflect on how they could similarly use their voice to advocate for what they believe in.

LGBT History is, he said, a case of “making visible what has often been invisible”. His talk looked at the progress made over time, noting the milestones, such as the 1969 Stonewall riots, which marked a shift in the profile of LGBT issues.

He spoke about the progress of the Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) agenda in Parliament – where until recently he worked two days a week – as well as in many large companies and organisations.

Mr Dellenty, who is a teacher and is a Diversity and Inclusion Manager at an independent school,  also spoke about the impact of words and of ‘banter’ – the damage done to people, sometimes leading to very serious consequences. “You need to take ownership of what comes out of your mouth,” he told the Sixth Form audience.

Head of Year 13 Simon Walker thanked Mr Dellenty for his talk. He noted as a History teacher that it was striking that LGBT histories were only now just starting to be unearthed or be focused on: they had previously simply not been regarded as a priority.

EDI Ambassadors Heemy Kalam and Victor Angelov, of Year 12, and the LGBTQ-E Society jointly ran a creative House competition on the theme of LGBT heroes.

Rebecca Grundy (Head of Extra-Curricular Enrichment) said a judging panel had chosen Year 9’s Trishan Chanda as the winner for his “very interesting essay” on Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, a 19^th-century German lawyer, jurist, journalist and writer, who is regarded as a pioneer in the study of sexual relationships. Second place went to Anik Singh, of Year 9, for a poster, and joint-third to Keon Roberts and Samrath Sareen, both of Year 9, for a poster and presentation respectively. All Houses were given House points based on how many entries they submitted, with bonus points given for the top three competition places. As a result, Underne won the  competition overall, with Stapylton second and Harrisons’ third.

With their impressive and impassioned delivery of Shakespeare’s best-known speeches, finalists in a Year 8 competition gave their classmates a powerful reminder that the bard’s plays were written for the stage, not the classroom.

Twelve young dramatists declaimed some of the most famous passages in the English language in front of their whole year group in the inter-House Performing Shakespeare competition – part of the inaugural QE Shakespeare Festival Week.

Congratulating all the finalists, Headmaster Neil Enright said it was perhaps particularly fitting that the overall individual winner, Soham Sapra, is a member of Leicester House, since that is named after the Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley.

“It was Leicester, one of the great figures of the Elizabethan age, a leading patron of the theatre and, of course, a near-contemporary of Shakespeare, who, in 1573, asked Queen Elizabeth I for the Charter to establish Queen Elizabeth’s School,” said Mr Enright. “Thus, our Shakespeare Festival Week in a sense honours his legacy to the arts as we prepare to celebrate the 450^th anniversary of our School next year. We are seeking to build on that legacy today through promoting drama and through the central importance we attach to oracy and verbal communication.”

The troupe of actors known as Leicester’s Men was the first travelling troupe to receive a royal licence under Elizabeth I. Its members included Will Kemp, who was later associated with Shakespeare, and James Burbage, who built The Theatre in Shoreditch, London’s first purpose-built theatre, which gave Leicester’s Men a permanent performance base. The design of the Theatre was very much like the original Globe Theatre, built in 1599 by Shakespeare’s playing company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.

The Performing Shakespeare competition began in the second half of the Autumn Term, when all boys in Year 8 were asked to select a Shakespeare speech to learn by heart and perform. This accompanied their curriculum studies of Othello.

For the final, the English department drafted in their own panel of ‘guest’ judges – History and Politics teacher Liam Hargadon, Head of Geography Emily Parry and Mrs Elaine White, retired teacher of drama at QE. The event was hosted by Assistant Head (Pupil Involvement) Crispin Bonham-Carter.

The audience and judges heard some of Shakespeare’s most famous speeches, including Hamlet’s “To be or not to be?”, Macbeth’s “Is this a dagger?”, and Henry V’s “Once more unto the breach, dear friends”.

The performers were judged not only on their physical performance and their vocalisation, but on how far their performance suited the speech, and on the extent to which their interpretation of the speech met their artistic intention.

Individual winner Soham chose the famous “All the world’s a stage” soliloquy spoken by the melancholy fool Jaques in As You Like It.

Head of English Robert Hyland said: “Soham gave an impressively accomplished performance, using different physical and vocal mannerisms to present each character in their speech with their own personality, and finished his speech by slowing down the pace of delivery and keeping his audience hooked.

“The overall House winner was Stapylton; Snehal Das gave a powerful empathetic performance as Shylock from The Merchant of Venice, and Nimesh Nirojan seemed like he was speaking to thousands in the Roman forum as he gave Antony’s funeral oration from Julius Caesar.”

The ability to perform Shakespeare’s speeches is integral to pupils’ understanding of the playwright, said Mr Hyland. “They are reminded that Shakespeare’s plays were never meant to be studied in class, but performed in theatres. Learning and performing a speech requires students to make judgements about what a character is saying, and how this will affect things like their movement, their vocal tone, and their interaction with the audience, in a way which analysis in an essay can never do.”

A major new photographic installation charts the history of School photos at QE, as preparations for next year’s 450^th anniversary gather pace.

The carefully curated collection of 232 photos of form groups, year groups, sports teams and prefect teams is displayed along the ground-floor corridor of the Main Building.

The installation, called Ties through Time, spans the decades from 1880 onwards, charting not only changing kits and uniforms, hair styles and even postures, but also the development of photography. It has been made possible by the work that has gone into QE Collections, the School’s free-to-use digital archive, which was launched last year.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “It has been very exciting to have the ground floor of our Main Building transformed with this celebration of continuity and change. The photos are a striking visual representation of our inspiring heritage, showing many thousands of people with this one thing in common: they all attended our School.”

Mr Enright paid tribute to the late Richard Newton (OE 1956-1964), whose vision and financial support made possible the extensive work currently going on to organise and digitise the School’s archive ahead of the 450th anniversary of QE’s founding in 1573.

“One of the sparks for the entire QE Collections project was Richard’s desire to see the preservation of the old group photographs that used to line the top-floor corridor,” he explained. “He has left a great legacy to the Elizabethan community in Barnet and we are indebted to him.”

The new display of photos extends either side of the Main School Hall. When the earliest were taken, photography, which is generally considered to have started in 1839, was still expensive and required specialist knowledge. Following the introduction of the Kodak camera in 1888, however, camera owners no longer had to develop film themselves.

In the years since, camera technology has undergone frequent change, with, for example, the introduction of colour and, more recently, of digital technology, replacing analogue film.

Work on the installation was led by Surya Bowyer (OE 2007–2014), founding Curator of QE Collections, with creative input from John Mgbadiefe and Rachael Simcox at architecture and design firm Bisset Adams.

The photos in the display, and countless other images and documents , can be seen remotely by visiting QE Collections.