Newport’s Nine Acres Primary School have been awarded the National Award for Cultural and Educational Awareness following their impressive performance at this year’s J Rock competition.
Back in April, Nine Acres travelled to Portsmouth Guildhall to take part in the Junior Rock Challenge. On the day, children received 10 awards of excellence and were placed 4th place overall with their theme ‘Blood Diamond’ – which depicted the lives of everyone affected by the the conflict diamond industry in Sierra Leone.
Fortunately for Nine Acres the celebrations did not stop there, as they have now been informed that they’ve picked up the national award.
Maisie Fry, Year 2 Teacher and Media Lead said:
“We are so incredibly proud of every single one of our pupils, whose passion, dedication and empathy towards a sensitive and emotional theme has allowed us to achieve such a staggering accolade!
“As soon as the theme was decided, the children conducted independent research about the illegal diamond trade in Africa. They were incredibly shocked by the facts and statistics related to blood diamonds and felt determined to do all that they could to deliver a powerful and significant message to the audience through our performance.
“Every child wrote their own passionate opening speech as part of an independent writing challenge, where they used their persuasive skills to introduce our performance. Collectively, we took the most impactful ideas from the children’s writing to create a collaborative introduction to our performance, along with the words and phrases for our protest banners. This fostered a sense of ownership among the children.
“Once children were allocated roles and characters, they were given a homework task, where they crafted their own backstory. They created their characters from their own minds, including where they had come from, what life experiences they had been through and their hopes and dreams for the future. This enabled each child to connect with the individual character that they were planning to portray in the final performance.
Article continues below this advertisement “Whether they were an African rebel, villager, soldier or rich business man, all children were able to build the personality of their character and therefore bring them to life on stage. In addition to this, and most importantly, it enabled children to recognise that their personal performances mirror the real lives of people who have been, and continue to be affected by the blood diamond conflict.
“We are so proud of you Nine Acres!”
