Cultural Capital and Capital Culture

As children move through the school years, they quietly accumulate cultural capital – such as visits to museums, exposure to multiple languages, encounters with diverse cuisines, and immersion in rich literary and conversational environments. When children are afforded access to such experiences, they are better equipped to engage with unfamiliar contexts and develop an open-minded worldview. It also enables them to envisage broader possibilities for their own futures beyond the immediate known world of their family and neighbourhood. It sparks curiosity to understand more about different people and places.

I have chosen to spotlight this week the cultural capital opportunities our Year 4s have been soaking up recently.

Last half term’s Inquiry focus in Year 4 was People can create or manipulate messages to target specific audiences, and the art lessons took this into the realms of René Magritte’s The False Mirror. Pupils explored the duplicity of seeing and being seen by the eyes of others and returned to their studies of drawing realistic images of facial features, both human eyes and then animal eyes. They had choices around mixing media, using pencil, pen and oil pastel, trying to capture the textures of feathers, scales or fur. This culminated with creating dragon eyes with a polymer clay and developing a narrative for their dragon’s character and qualities, which they used to determine the meaning of the colours they chose.

After so much effort, it was right to share their workbooks and finished pieces, and so families were invited to an exhibition a couple of weeks ago. The pupils proudly dragged family members from one stand to another, proud of how their art skills were evolving.

This week, Year 4 headed into London to visit the National Gallery. In and amongst the blushes of “so many naked flying babies”, as one pupil put it (I believe this was the high number of cherubs in the artwork they passed), the pupils moved their art focus to the iconic landscapes of Monet and Van Gogh. Not only were they wowed by the impressive London architecture, but the range of ways to capture the natural wonder of the world.

And yesterday evening was the annual Year 4 & Ensembles Concert, in which we were treated to 5 different groups and all of Year 4 serenading us. With each concert, we see the pupils grow in confidence and technique, the art of playing music together is quite tricky and following a conductor builds all kinds of musical skills. One of my favourites from the evening was the Chapel Choir singing Irish Blessing – I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house. The power of children singing so beautifully a song with such moving lyrics is like nothing else. The orchestras, bands and ensembles did such fabulous performances we really couldn’t ask for anything more. But then all of Year 4 took to the stage and delivered 3 show-stopping performances. The audience was in full toe-tapping, head bobbing, shoulder shimmying mode.

For the full write-up, please see the notes from our Director of Music, Mrs Romhany here.

Perhaps this weekend offers you an opportunity to visit an art gallery, or enjoy a concert, something to keep expanding your own cultural horizons.

Best wishes,

Alice Goodfellow