ONEMAKER ACADEMY CELEBRATING GOD’S GIFTS Let’s start from the very beginning What is OneMaker Academy? Why are they on the same site as Pacific Hills Christian School and New Hope Christian School? What is the connection between the Academy and the schools? How did OneMaker Academy at Pacific Hills start? In 2011 and 2012, a child of a school parent, Peter Draper, was very interested in dance and wanted to make dancing into his career. At the same time, there were a few other students who were also interested in dance and at that time, Pacific Hills Christian School (PHCS) wasn’t able to provide the subject of dance or the facilities to house a subject of this type. The students had to go to North Sydney to study the subject. (but more on this later) At the time, Prime Minister Julia Gillard was offering grants to educational institutions who wished to set up facilities for students to further their education. Performing Art Centres came under an approved category of grants to educational institutions. With assistance from a government grant, PHCS commenced construction of the “Performing Arts Centre”, a multi-million-dollar facility to cater for industry-leading educational and performancebased services. By 2013, OneMaker Academy, a Performing Arts Academy for music and dance, had been established and was now housed in the newly built Performing Arts Centre, known as the PAC, at the front of Pacific Hills Christian School. The PAC included a range of training rooms and performing facilities to cater for this multi-disciplinary performing arts academy. The facilities are world-class. Classes are run in beautiful Tarkett sprung floor studios as well as the state-of-the-art performance stage, giving each student the ability to learn and perform in a professional industry setting. For the parents and grandparents who had been asking for dance/vocal/drama/music activities outside the academic curriculum and onsite for their children, they were now able to tap into OneMaker Academy. Their need for a safe, Christian, international standard creative arts educator had been met. OneMaker Academy (OMA) was designed to provide exactly that - a Christian community, founded on Biblically based beliefs and values that encouraged excellence in learning, nurtured natural ability, cultivated creative expression and supported performance through music, dance and drama. OMA chose the Bible verse 1 Peter 4:10 to be the basis and vision for all their students: “ Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” (NIV). In the first few years, Rowan Tombs established a program which allowed specialist tutors to offer tuition in music, dance and drama, both during and after school. Ashley Brown assisted in this process of incorporating lessons during school time as well as running classes after school. Following Rowan and Ashley’s time, Annette Cadwallader, who was the Head of Junior School at the time, moved across to OMA and became its director. Annette has a lifetime of experience in the creative and performing arts and was happy to utilise her experience and skills to invest into this Christian performing arts academy. To ably assist her with the exponential growth of student numbers and skills development of all the students, Claire Leeds joined Annette - a formidable team. 23
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