Our Programme

Performing Arts at Claremont involves exposure to a range of different disciplines, giving performers the full range of experiences to develop their skills. Most will study one or more of the disciplines as an academic subject but there are also a wide range of other opportunities including:

  • Performing Arts LEP: For Year 9, students are able to take a learning enhancement programme in Performing Arts where they can explore different disciplines with freedom.
  • Performing Arts Elective: Every Wednesday afternoon students will be exposed to a range of workshops including Choral singing, acting for screen and streetdance.
  • Music Lessons: We provide a full range of individual lessons in instruments including Flute, Brass, Guitar, Piano and Music Production.
  • Our highly successful LAMDA programme offers 1:1 or group lessons in Acting and Public Speaking.
  • In Dance students can pursue Rambert grades.

Our unique approach

Our Performing Arts programme has been designed to help students explore creativity in its many guises. It is a programme that encourages students to aim high, experiment and take risks in a safe and supportive learning environment where everyone can shine.

The Claremont drama department puts strong focus on equality, allowing any person in the room to be the guiding force of every lesson or workshop. The way that staff and students work together in the department allows for deeper understanding of each other and of the work produced.

Our highly successful Co-Curricular programme gives students the opportunity to enjoy Performing Arts teaching outside of the formal curriculum. This works very well for students who are curious about the performing arts, but have chosen not to take studies to examination level.

❝ Seeing students, who elsewhere may not be heard, literally ‘hold the space’ and the attention of a live audience, leaves us in awe of them, time and time again! ❞

Sarah Cakebread – Director of Performing Arts

{"slidestoshow":"1","slidestoscroll":1,"dots":"false","arrows":"true","autoplay":"true","autoplay_interval":3000,"speed":300,"loop":"true","lazyload":""}
Claremont School - Shakespeare Macbeth

An exciting year-round schedule

We have a massive range of audiences for our performers to cater for – peers, family, staff, visiting schools, examiners and locals who have heard that we have theatre worth seeing! A flexible approach to teaching allows us to take risks throughout the year and put on spur-of-the-moment performances, alongside our larger scheduled pieces. Recent shows include:

  • Grease
  • Guys and Dolls
  • Shakespeare on the Lawn – Macbeth and Twelfth Night
  • Macbeth performances at local schools

Facilities

Our state-of-the-art performing arts and dance facilities are some of the best in the region, including a 220-seater theatre, spacious and light purpose-built dance studio, and multiple practice and performance rooms. This professional, separated environment encourages students to fully immerse themselves in their craft.

We recently opened a small fringe style venue, The Studio, as our second space. With the audience never more than a metre away, it has had a profoundly positive impact on the detail the performers are working in. They know that at this close proximity, they cannot just perform as the character they are playing, instead their every thought and twitch of an eye needs to belong entirely to the role.

Claremont School - Performing Arts
{"slidestoshow":"1","slidestoscroll":1,"dots":"false","arrows":"true","autoplay":"true","autoplay_interval":3000,"speed":300,"loop":"true","lazyload":""}

Exam success and renowned destinations

Our LAMDA provision is outstanding and offered to Gold standard, which is university level. In August 2024, all of our students achieved Distinctions in their examinations.

Dance students work towards GCSE and BTec grades as well as the prestigious Rambert Grades system, a new framework that works with the dancer as a whole person regardless of dance background. Claremont has been one of the first centres to take students through the Rambert programme with 100% distinctions and merits awarded in 2023.

In recent years, some of the prestigious destinations our school leavers have joined include RADA and Bird College.

Exceptional, connected practitioners

Our practitioners within the performing arts and dance programmes have decades of learning and teaching experience between them at the highest level, which our students are able to fully benefit from.

Dialogue with current industry professionals such as Cleo Demetrio and Alicia Alley and working with professional lighting and sound technicians in our annual Dance Show and Musical gives our students a very real experience of working in the industry and demands that they prepare fully, and commit wholeheartedly.

Claremont School