It will take us a long time to forget the Latin American Cultural Evening in the College Courtyard last night - not that we would ever want to erase the wonderful memories!

The professionalism and inspiration behind our cultural evenings makes it easy forget that these are always wholly student initiatives.  No teacher ever co-ordinates any of our cultural evenings - our students conceive, plan, organise, write the scripts, practice, perfect and perform an amazing series of dances and acts to give us all a deep insight into the music, history, culture, humour, drama, dance and thinking of their region - and this is all done in the students’ own time!

Last night, the Latin American performances were a rich kaleidoscope of all this and more that lasted almost two hours, and even more impressively, the performances were after we had enjoyed a buffet meal in the specially decorated canteen with sensational regional food and drink, also prepared by the students in co-operation with our catering staff.

For me, the cultural evenings that we hold at the College are one of the distinctive features of our identity as a United World College.  It is unlikely that our students will ever again have the chance to share their lives with similarly aged people from more than 80 countries, and our cultural evenings are one of the very enjoyable ways that we can all learn about the cultures of the world from those who know them best - the students who come from those countries.

I know that some of the other UWCs have changed the focus of their cultural evenings, moving away from a regional focus towards a thematic approach.  In other words, a theme is developed, such as love, water, peace, music, humour, or whatever, and students from every region are invited to share their own cultural perspectives on that theme.  It is difficult for me to imagine that this approach could possibly generate the passion and enthusiasm that our students demonstrate as they are given the opportunity to showcase their culture - their faraway homes.  At LPCUWC, we discussed the thematic alternative option last year, and I think the right decision was made to continue with the regional focus.

Our cultural evenings are an excellent example of creativity in action.  I was reminded of the importance of creativity as a fundamental component of an education that prepares young people for our future world when I watched an excellent video clip this week showing the British author and education advisor, Sir Ken Robinson, in which he posed the question - are schools killing creativity?  In the video clip, he makes a compelling case that is both very entertaining and profoundly moving that schools tend to undermine creativity rather than nurture it.  I have included a link to the video clip (at the bottom of this blog), and I would encourage anyone with an interest in future directions in education to spend 20 entertaining and thought-provoking minutes watching it.

Before you view the clip, however, please enjoy a few more photos of last night’s Latin American Cultural evening.  Each image can be clicked to see a larger copy.  When you have browsed these images, please scroll down to the video clip at the foot of this blog.