It’s been fantastic to open the academic year with a whole program of projects and opportunities in place via the artists, creative thinkers and practitioners who collaborate with our community via our artist residency Thailand program. Opening the year was the Austrian-American Artist, choreographer, movement and performance specialist, Timothy Nouzak.

Timothy Nouzak’s engagements were essentially demonstrative of what the Artist Residency Thailand programme is all about. Having a movement specialist didn’t  just mean that our students and community were better placed to develop skills in dance or in devising choreographic routines, but in reality, we have had a lens these last two weeks that has opened opportunities for inquiry across subject areas and grade levels.

In grade two we explored how we can use our senses to more deeply engage with our campus and other environments. We looked at how this understanding can give us a greater sense of connection to one another and an enhanced knowledge of who we are and how we connect. In visual arts classes, the grade 2 students further explored how movement and the mapping of our environments can create line, shape, tone and other visual ingredients that can be turned into unique, collaborative art-works. Our IB diploma students in both theatre and visual arts had the opportunity to investigate how techniques from dance and choreographic practice can inform approaches to giving feedback or devising new work. We questioned where visual art stops and where performance art begins, who we are as artists and how that might inform our values as humans.

There were additional engagements, workshops and even professional development opportunities within our community that looked at how meditation and mindfulness can inform choreography and movement, but more importantly than all of these separate sessions and connections, we once again had regular, face-to-face engagements on our campus with another award-winning, international practitioner who brought different lenses and approaches into the teaching and learning that takes place at Prem.

Look out for news of more collaborations, workshops and engagements with students, as well as opportunities for our wider community to collaborate with our next practitioner, Rosalia Gitau. Rosalia will be bringing her professional passion for creative writing to our community as of September 19th.

Alex Soulsby

Creative Director