Kainui Concert

In term 2 as part of my performing arts leadership, I was responsible for organising the Kainui Concert. This leadership was not just within my own school but across our entire cluster.
I put a significant amount of work into planning and organising the show which involved regular communication with the other schools.
I am including this post in my blog to provide evidence of my leadership experience which is relevant to the teaching criteria.


My role involved the following;

1. Creating a 10 minute performing arts piece for our school    
This included writing a script, choreographing dances and designing and making costumes and props. I worked with my students on this. They actually created the dances and I supported them. Everyone decided their own parts e.g. who wanted to speak, dance, blend in to the background etc. Because I wrote the script, I was able to tailor it to the talents and abilities of the students in my class. It was a really big job which invovled a significant amount of my own time to prepare. Students also spent a lot of class time planning for and rehearsing for the performance.

I decided to make the performance relevant to our learning. In Term 1 we had done some learning about the Maori Atua during reading time so acting out the story was directly linked to our topic.

2. Organising the event for the cluster- 

This included booking The Regent, organising tickets, sales, seating arrangements, logistics, programme order, advertising, lighting, sound etc.

I laiased with schools about their needs with regards to sound, lighting, music, digital files etc.

I was responsible for the rehearsal programme as well as the overall programme for the show.

I made the programmes for the evening and the posters for the other schools to advertise the event.

I created a Google Drive which I used to share a large amount of information and resources for  schools. This means that in future, if I am not the one to organise the event, everything is there and ready for the next person to pick it up and carry on.

3. Collaborative Song-

This year I added in an element. Last time, all the schools sang 3 collaborative songs together. This year I thought it would be cool to have solo singers to represent each school in the collaborative songs. This meant we sang choruses all together but the verses were sung by soloists.

This involved..

a) Auditioning solo singers from my school and ensuring other schools did the same.

b) Meeting with the solo singers to listen to them sing.

c) Allocate singers parts in our two collaborative songs based on their voices/singing style/vocal range etc. Record all parts for each child and send back to the schools so everyone knew who was doing what,

d) Getting students to practice the songs at their own schools both solo singers and the rest of the group.

e) Workshop held with me at Mt Biggs for solo singers so I could check their progress

f) A further rehearsal at The Regent + sound check.

g) Performance with 350 children including 14 solists.

Overall the event was very successful and the feedback was very positive with regards to the show itself and my organisation of it. The rehearsal day was well planned and ran smoothly. Hiccups were allowed for and were not a problem. This ensured a stress free evening show where everything ran like clockwork.

As part of this event, I continued to build on my kete of skills with regards to leadership and the performing arts.