On Tuesday 23rd November, we were delighted to welcome over 160 parents, donors, staff, students and guests to the Grand Opening of our brand new Art, Drama and Music Studios, which were transformed over a six week period in Summer 2021 as part of our Acceleration Project. The Acceleration Project took place in January and February 2021 with the aim of emerging stronger from the pandemic; the money raised funding refurbishment works over the Summer.

The event began with an address from Mr Fillingham, welcoming our guests and thanking our generous donors, without whom the Acceleration Project would not have been possible, before introducing our guest of honour, Damian Lewis OBE.

Our new Drama Theatre has been named the Helen McCrory Studio Theatre in tribute to Mr Lewis’s late wife, who made an unrivalled contribution to Drama at FHS. Mr Lewis made an eloquent and moving speech, focusing on the fundamental importance of the creative arts in providing a holistic education. He said that ‘Helen and I believed strongly that central to the success of any good school is a healthy Arts programme. All the skills that you learn in a theatre space, a safe space where you can throw around ideas and devise things, learn ensemble work, cultivate critical faculties and then deploy those faculties creatively and imaginatively, and learn empathy for others, are things that the theatre teaches and I think are central to the success, as Helen did, of any school.’

Mr Lewis also described the extensive work he and Helen have done with the HVH Arts Charity in Camden, one of our charity partners which supports disadvantaged children in achieving their dreams and which has now set up the ‘McCrory Award’, also in Helen’s memory, which is dedicated to supporting gifted children from disadvantaged backgrounds who do not have access to the means to fulfil their true creative potential. He finished his speech with an incredibly poignant quote about Drama at FHS, saying that ‘I hope that all the girls here will find that the Helen McCrory Studio Theatre will be a space where they can, safely within their hearts, minds and souls, travel widely in a varied way through their imaginations without fearing that they are under any pressure, at any point, to arrive’. He then unveiled the plaque which will be pride of place in the Helen McCrory Studio Theatre for decades to come.

Following this, our guests were given guided group tours of our new facilities, where our girls were showcasing the consistently high calibre of work they produce during their Art, Drama and Music lessons and co-curricular activities. Our GCSE and A Level artists were hard at work producing stunning pieces of art in our new Art Studios, using an impressive variety of mediums. In the Helen McCrory Studio Theatre, girls performed mesmerising costume rehearsals for the upcoming performance of Jane Eyre at the Steiner Theatre. Finally, our musicians performed high level solo performances using a wide variety of instruments and treated our guests to a jaw-droppingly brilliant rehearsal for our upcoming performance of Dido & Aeneas by our Sixth Form Opera Singers and accompanying Lower School Choir.

Thank you so much to all who attended and made the event such a success, particularly to Mr Lewis for his fantastic contribution, and to all our donors who have enabled us to offer such an outstanding and all-encompassing Arts education across the board.