28/03/2025

Aspiring actors are winners at the Peterborough Drama Festival

A group of 12 talented performing arts students from Cowley Academy took to the stage at the Peterborough Drama Festival last term to compete against students from other schools including Bourne Academy and Spalding Academy.

The festival is a fantastic showcase of performing arts with the aim to promote speech and performance skills. This amazing experience has increased our student’s confidence by performing in front of a live audience and also developed their artistic expertise.

Students competed in five different categories that included monologues, duologues and group acting across Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 age groups.

There was great success for Cowley Academy as Scarlett Conway & Oliver Edwards were awarded first place and Mia Epton & Talia Webb were awarded second place in the ‘KS4 Duologues’ category. Lilaah Chapman, Jessie Firth, Logan Louth-Sharp & Millie Pledger were also awarded third place in the ‘KS3 Group Acting’ category.

The judges were glowing about the duologue performance from Scarlett and Oliver, which demonstrated fluent technical and artistic skills. They said “The relationship between the two characters developed naturally with intensity and belief. The pace was well controlled, the props were used effectively and the scene had an emotional structure. There was a convincing performance from both characters.”

Across the Trust, we had students placed in first, second or third place in all five categories, which is a brilliant achievement especially as this was the first time the schools in the Trust have competed in the festival.

Mr Wood, Director of Performance & Creative Arts at South Lincolnshire Academies Trust said “All students worked extremely hard in preparation for the festival and performed with flair and vigour. The judges were very complementary of the quality of the work and all the students should be extremely proud of themselves by bringing positivity and energy to the festival.”