Lion King arts month at Horley school

Dreary January? Not at Charlwood Village Primary School! 2025 has started with a bang of excitement for the staff and children, who all travelled by coach up to Central London to see the West End production of The Lion King.

The Arts Leader, Miss Vigar, said “The trip was organised in order to show the children some of the very best examples of The Arts available in the UK. At Charlwood, we have an amazing staff team, who all work extremely hard to give our pupils a wide range of high quality learning opportunities. Experiencing such excellent acting, choreography, puppetry, music and technical, costume and set design in London not only inspired some of the children to voice an interest in working in the industry in the future, but also created a foundation for a whole-school Lion King themed Arts day on our return back to school.”

During the Arts day, the staff ran 7 workshops which focused on various aspects of the performing arts, including puppetry, choreography, art and music. In one work shop, the children were encouraged to compose and record their own sound tracks to accompany a section of the film. A second workshop enabled them to create and perform dance routines which drew upon inspiration from the concept of shadow puppetry and other sessions taught the pupils some of the techniques used when designing simple rod and shadow puppets.

The children also participated in a djembe drumming session and designed and made masks to represent characters from the London production.

Edward, Year 5, said about the experiences, “my favourite bit about seeing the Lion King performance was when they sang Hakunah Matata. I thought the way the characters performed it was funny. The best bit about our Lion King activities day was the dance activity because I was Simba. We danced behind a white sheet. A light was shining from behind it. Our teacher gave us props and, as we danced behind the sheet, the light and our bodies created a shadow, which made us look like the characters from The Lion King. During our activity day, we also got to play African instruments. I had never realised before how hard it is to play the djembe drum. I was inspired by the way our teacher taught us how to play the drums.”