Art trips: Cultural Enrichment Programme

Students at Durham Sixth Form Centre have the opportunity to take part in extra-curricular visits both at home and abroad to enrich their educational experience. The visits often involve collaboration with other departments such as History, Government and Politics and Design and Technology. The Centre invited students from Durham Johnston School when they visited Russia

Visits are organised at least once, sometimes twice a year to give everyone a chance to participate and in addition, day trips to Edinburgh and London also take place regularly. Over the last ten years our students have been on residential visits to Holland and Barcelona several times, Bilbao, St. Petersburg, Krakow and London. Trips vary from four to seven days and always have a busy and varied itinerary: for example in St Petersburg, students saw the Russian Ballet perform Swan Lake, visited a jazz club and watched a folk concert as well as going to the Hermitage and the Summer Palace. More recently in July 2007 they travelled to Poland where they experienced Auschwitz, the famous Salt Mines and they ate at a Jewish restaurant. The latest trip to London took in a show – ‘Blood Brothers’; a 3D film at the largest IMAX cinema in Britain; The Turner Prize Retrospective at Tate Britain, Tate Modern, the ‘Couture’ Show at the V&A, a workshop run by an artist from the Royal College of Art and the London Eye. The visit wasn’t all culture - shopping in Harrods, Covent Garden and Oxford Street was squeezed into the busy schedule!

Recent visits:
2007 November - London
2007 July – Poland
2006 November - Barcelona
2006 July – Edinburgh
2005 November – London
2005 July – Edinburgh
2004 July - York
2004 November – Cantabria / Bilbao
2003 November – St Petersburg, Russia


Examples of letters to parents setting out trip proposals are shown below along with a selection of photographs from visits.