The Arts

Our Art and Design Technology Departments are hugely popular places, providing a creative outlet for children who enjoy and excel in these subjects. We want all children to enrich their learning with art. Art is part of our curriculum and children are taught all aspects of art including drawing, painting, sculpture pottery, design and technology, and woodwork.

The Art room is often open and supervised in free time at the weekend, enabling the children to express their creativity and make use of our wonderful resources outside of lessons. Regular art exhibitions give our young artists the chance to show off their work and witness the joy it brings to the rest of the school, parents and wider community.

We are keen for all children to experience the joy that Performing Arts can bring to their lives. Thanks to our outstanding and inspirational teachers, drama is very popular at Pembroke and we have enjoyed a number of successes in recent years, including winning the annual Badminton Trophy Drama competition in 2019.

We want to make sure that every child has the chance to participate in our drama productions, not only to help develop courage, confidence and self-belief but also because they are so much fun! We put on three major plays school plays a year, always to packed audiences: the Junior School nativity in the Michaelmas Term, the Senior School musical in the Lent Term, and the Middle School play in the Trinity Term. All our shows are fully staged with lighting, costumes, music and dance numbers, adding that extra bit of sparkle.

For those children who particularly enjoy drama, we run the highly regarded LAMDA speech and drama programme as an optional extra. Children can take LAMDA exams at school and we are extremely proud of our 100% pass rate in recent years.

Music is thriving at Pembroke and is embedded as a subject in our curriculum. We also offer additional individual instrumental and voice lessons, including musical theatre tuition, for those who want to learn an instrument, progress their singing and develop their repertoire.

We have three wonderful choirs and a plethora of small instrument groups with regular concerts enabling children to show off their talents and gain experience in public performance. Every year, we take part in choir festivals and the Orchestral Concert at St Andrew’s, Turi. Our magnificent organ is one of only two in Kenya. We were absolutely delighted to host the first ever Organ & Choral Concert in our chapel, with children and adults participating from all over the country.

Pembroke has a wonderful team of peripatetic and resident music teaches and offers individual lessons in guitar, piano, flute, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, violin, voice and drums. Children typically have one lesson per week and these are added to the school bill at the end of term. Children learning instruments are invited to participate in our termly music recitals which is a great opportunity for them to show what they have been learning and build confidence performing. There are currently approximately 150 children studying one or more musical instruments.