New era for the Arts Faculty

NEW ERA IN THE ARTS FOR DIO

The start of Term 2 signalled a newly expanded role for our Head of Drama, Sarah Spicer, as she took up her promotion as Head of Faculty – Arts. Andre Worsnop, who was previously in the role for 17 years, left Dio last term to become one of the deputy principals at Glendowie College. His role as Teacher in Charge of Music has been taken by Rachel Sutherland.

Sarah’s new Head of Faculty role entails managing visual arts, drama, dance and music, as well as planning for the future of the arts subjects in the context of the new Performing Arts Building, completed earlier this year. Sarah will continue to teach senior and junior drama classes, and lead Dio’s drama Scholarship programme.

“I’m very excited to be taking up this new role,” says Sarah, who has been teaching at Dio for the past five years. “It’s an exciting time for the arts with a lot of change in the industry and, of course, the added excitement of being able to teach, learn and perform in the new Performing Arts Centre.”

Sarah has many accomplishments, including significant success in the National Shakespeare Festival, and being awarded a Fulbright Scholarship. Sarah is also a professional actor and director. Originally from the UK, she emigrated to New Zealand eight years ago. During her time in the UK, she directed at the National Theatre in London, and was a West End actress, mainly performing Shakespeare. She is also a published writer of plays and poetry.

Sarah holds several qualifications, including a Masters of Educational Leadership from Cambridge University. She trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and is currently studying for her doctorate in education. Prior to joining the staff at Dio, Sarah had been Head of Drama at Logan Park High School in Dunedin. In her role as Head of Drama she has been instrumental in creating a curriculum that is strengthened by international industry professionals and developing a co-curricular programme to work in conjunction with the other arts disciplines.

Sarah introduced the Theatre Studies IB Diploma programme in the last two years, achieving top-ranking results among international students.

“Performing Arts at Dio is supported and strengthened by international industry professionals, which sets the bar high and allows us to have a revered industry standard. all arts disciplines, and the top-ranking examination results they achieve across all year levels.”

As Dio’s new Teacher in Charge of Music, Rachel Sutherland, brings a wealth of experience to the role.

“I’m really excited about my new role, and with the changes coming to the Middle Years Programme of International Baccalaureate and NCEA Level 1, I think it’s a really exciting time to be involved in music and the arts,” she says.

Rachel, who’s a Dio Old Girl (1993-2000), has a Masters of Music in Classical Performance (Voice) from the University

Sarah Spicer and André Worsnop

Rachel Sutherland

of Auckland and a Bachelor of Arts with an English Literature major and Ethnomusicology and Italian minors.

She has been Director of Choral Music at Dio since late 2018, overseeing the choral programme, and Director of the Dio handbells since 2013. She first started teaching classroom music at Dio in 2015.

Rachel’s tutelage and leadership has helped ensure Dio’s elite choir, St Cecilia Singers, maintains its reputation as one of the top upper voice school choirs in New Zealand. St Cecilia Singers has secured a spot in the national final of The Big Sing every consecutive year since 2013.

Rachel Sutherland’s idea of downtime is full to the brim with music.

In her nine-year role of assistant director and vocal consultant of the New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir, she has spent her Term 1 holidays overseeing and training the group of 56 student singers from all over the country. Two Dio students, Hattie Johnston and Sunny Zhang, are in the choir, which performed at the National Anzac Day Remembrance Service at Wellington’s Pukeahu Memorial Park.

She is still active as a soprano soloist and ensemble singer in Auckland and across New Zealand, and is an active performing member of the Voices New Zealand Chamber choir since 2010. Andre Worsnop joined Diocesan as the Teacher in Charge of Music in 2004 and finished his 17 years of dedicated service in April 2021 as the Head of the Arts Faculty.

These were interesting times; the curriculum was restructured into the eight learning areas of the New Zealand Curriculum and several departments, like visual art and drama, were brought under the arts banner. Andre was appointed in 2009 to lead this new Faculty of the Arts, bringing together visual arts, drama, music and eventually dance.

Andre managed this transition superbly. A feature of Andre’s management style is the strong relationships he builds, the ability to listen and then change his mind if necessary, and his determination to advocate on behalf of his team members around the curriculum table. This doesn’t mean that Andre was blind to the curriculum needs of others or so parochial that he saw an arts-versus-the-world paradigm; his view was that a creative world served us all well. And he would often remind us of the words of Sir Ken Robinson and his fear that indeed school could and did kill the creativity in its students.

When I asked members of the performing arts and arts areas for some feedback, one used an angel emoji, another said he was the voice of reason in a potentially volatile area – citing the fact they were all artistes! Super organised, with a spreadsheet to handle any problem!

Andre retained the TIC music role in his move to HOF and with the small numbers in his senior classes he worked hard to provide the individual programmes that these students craved. That meant that they weren’t all funnelled into a classical programme or a modern programme, dependent on the skills of the teachers. He ensured that the skills and talents and passions each student brought to the classroom were fostered and maximised.

Alongside this was the rock band programme, which grew out of class groups to co-curricular programmes and Andre has seen Dio launch several bands onto the Rockquest stage. One of the most successful was Vivid (Ashleigh Wallace, Kathleen Williams, Elly McBurney, Alice Tilley) who placed third in 2014 in the national finals, and Feijoa Funk (Sarah Casey, Ally Quatermass, Olivia Coulliault and Eloise Cameron Smith) was the most recent. But there have been many other People’s Choice awards, songwriting awards and generally a whole bunch of Dio girls jamming it with the best of them and each year another generation hits the Chapel Courtyard at lunchtimes to entertain us. Andre has also encouraged the entrants into the song-writing competition ‘Play it Strange’, with many having their pieces professionally recorded.

One of the most important legacies that Andre leaves Dio is the fantastic programme to support Provisionally Certificated Teachers and Beginner Teachers. Andre came to the senior team with the proposal and from that has grown a significant support programme for new teachers or new and returning teachers to New Zealand. Andre worked with outside experts to develop the programme, and then worked with Dio teachers as mentors to implement it. We now have a programme of support that is second to none and the support we give to new teachers to our profession is invaluable.

Andre is heading for the role as Deputy Principal at Glendowie College. We congratulate him on this important step in his career and wish him all the best for his future career moves.