Our First Ever Blouberg International School Arts Eisteddfod!
The BIS Arts Eisteddfod was created to offer students a chance to build confidence and skills through performing to an audience and provide feedback from external expert adjudicators. It is also an opportunity to watch and share with fellow musicians. We are excited for this to be the beginning of a new annual tradition at our school!
The Music category took place on Wednesday, 11 August 2021. As the music department, we aim to create multiple platforms for our students to perform in front of audiences and adjudicators, so that they have firm goals to work towards, and have the opportunity to learn something new and different from each experience. It is very important for our musicians to not only learn how to play their instrument, but to also learn how to become a confident performer.
We welcomed Ms Elizabeth Retief, head of music at Elkanah House, as our adjudicator for the music Eisteddfod. For the high school category, we congratulate Mateja Mitic, Faith Chivaka, Iviwe Matakata, Jéan Marie Schoots, Saumya Maharaj and Niklyn Pillay on their outstanding performances and results. A special congratulations to Zoe Onochie for winning the high school Eisteddfod Music category for 2021.
We hope to see and hear many more of our students in future Eisteddfods.
Heidi La Bercensie
Music Teacher – IGCSE Music
A special congratulations to Zoe Onochie for winning the high school Eisteddfod Music category for 2021.
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Announcing the First BIS Exceptional Eisteddfod Experience (Grade 1- Grade 13)
It is with great excitement that we are offering an internal Eisteddfod at BIS this year.
Eisteddfod literally means a sitting (eistedd = to sit), a reference to the hand-carved chair traditionally awarded to the best poet in the ceremony during the first Eisteddfod in 1176 in Wales.
An Eisteddfod offers a chance to build confidence and skills through performing to an audience, and provides helpful notes from expert adjudicators from outside our school. Whether you can sing, dance, act, recite or play an instrument, it’s a unique opportunity to meet others in the same field and compare performances.
Performing in an eisteddfod gives participants:
- A goal to work towards.
- Greater focus to their practice.
- Expert feedback from external experts – the comments being more useful than the marks.
- Performance experience – because of COVID, the opportunity to perform to an audience has been restricted. An internal Eisteddfod offers a chance to play to a group of people, while maintaining correct procedures.
- A chance to build confidence and skills.
- An opportunity to see and share with others taking part.
The “rating” of the candidate is then expressed in different “levels” of awards (diploma, gold, silver, bronze, etc.), which indicates the candidate’s progress in terms of his own knowledge, skills and understanding relevant to the particular genre.
We would like to encourage our students to take advantage of this great opportunity.
“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.” ― Peter Pan
