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On Wednesday 15th January 2014, a few GCSE Art and Chemistry students from Year 9 went on a trip to Oxford to participate in an Art and Chemistry themed day at the University. We were all very eager to go despite the extremely early start to the day. We met with Miss Davis and Mr Joshi at the academy Reception and left in the minibus at 7am. The drive to Oxford took around two hours. For the first hour we chatted excitedly to one another before fatigue from waking up so early kicked in. Most of us slept through the second half of the journey.

When we arrived we had to walk for a few minutes to get to the Ashmolean Museum. It was quite cold and we were grateful to get into a warm building. We waited for about ten minutes before a very cheerful lady came and led us to a smaller room where groups of five students from various other schools were. We were then led to various displays in the museum including a wall filled with old stone tablets depicting scenes from the Neolithic Period. The theme of the day was ‘Perspective’ so we had a discussion about how perspective was important in these pieces of art. Olivia and I were curious about the tablet nearest to us because it was covered with lines of a form of ancient scripture. We also saw the famous painting “The Hunt in the Forest” by Paolo Uccello and discussed how the Renaissance painter had managed to get the perspective perfectly right and created a feeling of greater depth than the tablets had.

After this we were split into two groups. We walked to The Museum of The History of Science for the chemistry activities of the day. This museum was my favourite, as it had many old scientific objects on display such as old sundials, celestial globes and the first form of calculators. Most of the items had impossibly small words and measurements carved into them. After looking around we went downstairs to a smaller room and were split into groups. We had to model covalent bonds of elements from the periodic table (excluding the transition metals). Although it was hard to understand at first we soon figured out how to do it.

We were all amazed by the delicious lunch and the dining hall which was like Hogwarts! It had long tables that spanned the length of the room, historical portrait paintings on the walls and even a large organ. We then went back to The Museum of The History of Science and had a discussion about perspective in paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci then went outside to do one observational drawing through using a camera obscura. We agreed that this was our favourite part of the trip. Once we had finished this we went over to the Ruskin School of Art for a talk on artwork perspective to bring the day to a close. I definitely learnt some new Art words and ways in which I can now discuss artworks critically.

Overall, I think we can all agree that this was the best school trip we have ever been on. It certainly was for me. I learnt many new things, ate a delicious lunch, got to meet new people and friends. I would definitely like to do something like this again.

Kiera Moreno 9AP