Staying Busy During Lockdown
If you are looking for things to do during this difficult time, we have curated a list of useful suggestions from throughout the Mayfield community, including more than 30 Old Cornelians spread across six continents. We will be adding to this list as we come across other interesting resources. We hope you can find some inspiration among the below!
We would also like to share with you an article written by one of our Year 12 students, Coco, which was recently published in Tatler, with her suggestions on how to keep busy during lockdown. We think she has some great ideas! You can find them here.
Chaplaincy Resources
To see a list of parishes in the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton streaming Masses, click here: https://www.dabnet.org/News/View/308
To see a list of parishes in the Diocese of Southwark streaming Masses, click here: http://www.rcsouthwark.co.uk
Daily Mass, and Rosary, are streamed on https://www.lourdes-france.org/en/tv-lourdes/. (If there is nothing on the live stream, click ‘replay’ for the most recent service)
This American resource shows daily Mass from various shrines and cathedrals, along with the Pope’s daily Mass, Rosary, daily prayer, and a lot more: http://www.catholictv.org/masses
For information on Church of England streaming services, use this search tool: https://www.achurchnearyou.com/
Mass with the Pope, and much more from the Vatican can be found on: https://www.vaticannews.va/en.html
Streaming of services at Ampleforth Abbey can be found here: https://www.ampleforth.org.uk/abbey/service-times
If you prefer the Jesuits: https://www.farmstreet.org.uk and for those who remember Father Dominic: https://www.oxfordoratory.org.uk has a live stream on YouTube; as do the Dominicans: https://www.bfriars.ox.ac.uk
Music and Art
Podcasts ‘Talk Art’ and ‘The Great Woman Artists’ interview current artists, as well as some curators and collectors. Both are entertaining whilst been very informative and insightful.
Art UK is the online home of every public art collection across the UK and is a wonderful resource for students, researchers and anyone with an interest in, or love of, art. Searches are fun and interesting. Enter a search term under ‘menu’ on the top right of the screen to peruse hundreds of art-related stories, with more being added all the time: https://artuk.org/
The Royal Academy of Art has numerous offerings online including the new digitally-opened Gaugin Exhibition and 'Online Explore' which features more than 10,000 digitised works of art plus Chef Tom Kerridge's top art picks, and ‘A Doodle a Day’: www.royalacademy.org.uk
To find out what is going on at the Paris Opera click here.
To find out what is going on at the Zurich Opera House click here.
The Montreux Jazz Festival showcases musical legends such as Jonny Cash and Ray Charles here. You will need to enter the code FREEMJF1M.
Neil Young is releasing ‘Fireside Sessions’ via his Neil Young Archives website accessible here.
Wigmore Hall is livestreaming some of its live concerts catalogue.
The Show Must Go Out - Andrew Lloyd Webber is streaming his musicals on YouTube.
Sadlers Wells are also live-streaming various programmes.
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Take a deep-dive into the world of historically informed performance with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment's fantastic selection of videos about all kinds of weird and wonderful instruments. We are delighted that the Youth Folk Sampler Day, which we were going to host in collaboration with the National Youth Folk Ensemble in May, is now taking place as a digital event. If you are aged 12-18, play an instrument, and are interested in playing by ear, gaining new skills and learning about folk music then make sure you sign up to take part online: www.saffronhall.com |
The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is offering free live-streaming of concerts.
The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra is posting videos of past performances each Thursday night at 19:30 and Sunday afternoons at 14:30 on its Facebook page, so we can all continue to enjoy their music together.
Malone’s Big Virtual Choir is continuing rehearsals online every night at 17:30. Register here for information on how to sign up: https://decca.com/greatbritishhomechorus/
Also, in a similar vein, The Living Room Ensemble includes instrumental parts.
The Hastings International Piano Competition is hosting a series of brief online performances by its artists.
More contemporary streams coming directly from headline acts can be found on this link from Condé Nast Traveller: Together, At Home. The most talked-about virtual music event began with Coldplay frontman, Chris Martin, playing a 30 minute performance of his own hits and covers including David Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’.
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Cellist Alisa Weilerstein, who you may have seen perform at Saffron Hall in February 2019, is taking on '365 Days of Bach' by tweeting a video of herself performing his music every day at Live From Our Living Room. |
Dance and Theatre
The Royal Ballet School performs 'Peter and the Wolf at www.roh.org
The Royal Opera House www.roh.org.uk is offering a free live programme of full-length ballet and opera performances which should provide a lovely introduction for those who would not ordinarily watch this sort of production. They begin at 19:00 BST and are streamed on Facebook and YouTube. 'The Metamosphosis' is being shown on 17 April at 19:00.
The National Theatre at Home is streaming free full-length plays on YouTube every Thursday at 19:00 BST, starting with James Corden in ‘One Man, Two Guvnors’ - www.nationalthreatre.org.uk.
From Monday 6th April, Shakespeare’s Globe is making available its own public streaming platform without the usual charge. You can sign up on the Globe Player website.
Before the end of term, the Drama Department reminded the girls that Mayfield’s subscription to Digital Theatre Plus provides access to a plethora of recorded plays and productions - www.digitaltheatreplus.com. Mr Smith has sent each girl the School username and password.
Exercise
Joe Wicks is running exercise classes for children daily at 09:00 on Youtube.
Cosmic Kids Yoga gets good reviews.
The NHS has also launched its own platform with different training options to suit everyone.
National Heritage and Gardens
Explore Audley End from the comfort of your own home and take a virtual stroll around the gardens.
Books and Literature
Sir Patrick Stewart is reading a Shakespearean sonnet a day on Facebook, even explaining an archaic word or two: https://www.facebook.com/patrickstewart/
Amazon has cancelled the subscription costs for books and audio stories for children and students for as long as schools are closed. Children everywhere can instantly stream an incredible collection of stories, including titles across six different languages, that will help them continue dreaming, learning, and enjoying themselves. All stories are free to stream on your desktop, laptop, phone or tablet using the following link: https://stories.audible.com/start-listen
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For a different level of alternative culture, one dotty old woman 'Old Girl' and her dog 'Chirpy Gordon', stream daily at 10:30 on Facebook. Disclaimer: We do not aim to rival Shakespeare or James Cordon, neither in comedy, tragedy nor profundity! |
Museums
Many more of the world's greatest museums are welcoming virtual visitors - now is your chance to have a private viewing without all the crowds!
The Louvre: https://www.louvre.fr/en/visites-en-ligne
The Metropolitan Museum of Art: www.moma.org
The British Museum: https://britishmuseum.withgoogle.com
The National Portrait Gallery: https://www.npg.org.uk/
Follow Time Out's link to 11 must-see museums including The Uffizi, The Rijksmuseum and The Guggenheim: https://www.timeout.com/travel/virtual-museum-tours
Life Imitates Art – if your daughters (or other family members) aren’t quite getting the fine art vibe, use the sites above for inspiration and try the latest craze to recreate classic paintings with objects found around the house (toilet rolls seem to be the medium of choice globally!) To get you started, have a look at this website, which has some of the better efforts we have seen.
Courses/General Interest – Learn Something New!
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The BBC has just announced it will be launching a learning resource up to and including Year 10. It has also launched a series on 'How to see the World without Leaving Your Room' which can be found here. The Khan Academy is a US learning resource for children and adults Audible has released hundreds of children’s books to listen to for free Oxford University's Department for Continuing Education brings the world to you: museum collections, recorded lectures, language learning, music and more. The Open University has a lot of free courses online - several of which may be of interest.
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Steven Fry's 'Great Leap Years' podcast is great fun.
For suggestions for Sixth Formers, please click here.
The Geography Department subscribes to Digimaps for Schools – an affiliate of Edinburgh University, in partnership with Ordnance Survey. The interface is intuitive, the tools and instructions are easy to understand, and there is no download or new software installation required. It supports cross-curricula teaching of geography, maths, literacy, and history, and also enables girls to gain critical digital and data skills. Users can customise maps to tell a story - by adding pictures, graphs or climate information to support creative, engaging and interactive learning. All UK areas have a slider to show historical maps. They have also just released a YouTube recording of a recent homeschooling webinar. This resource is available for all girls, parents and staff using the login: tn206ph and password: snimbs8348.
Condé Nast Traveller has ten wonderful ways to expand your horizons including learning pasta making from a real Italian nonna, learning Korean with BTS, 2D animation, and more here.
Culture Whisper has an online compendium of art-related activities, including One Man Two Governors, Shakespeare Opera, cookery lessons, art with Grayson Perry, etc. It's free, but you do have to follow some of the What's on Online links to get all the information.
Free courses from top institutions https://www.edx.org/ may be advanced but could be a fun challenge.
Udemy offers heavily discounted online courses, on all manner of topics: https://www.udemy.com/
TedX.com provides hundreds of engaging and thought-provoking lectures (that are a maximum of 17-minutes long) on an incredibly broad range of ‘ideas worth spreading.’
Co-fight 19 is a bounce-back campaign bringing together the nation's creative ideas to provide practical support, comfort, inspiration & hope in a global health crisis.
New from Oxford University Press - free access to Kerboodle and My Maths until September 2020. Contact katie.farrington@oup.com for more details.
Free creative online workshops for teenagers from the The Creative Dimension Trust.
Digital and Distance Learning offers and resources from SAM Labs.
Pearson - updates and online resources for UK schools.
HomelearningUK - Curated resource for schools, students and parents.
Siemens Online STEM Resources - for curriculum lesson plans, interactive resources, insights into STEM careers and a video of the SeeMe show (Y7).
https://e-bug.eu/ is an online resource for older and younger children.
Games
Cornelia Connelly encouraged the playing of cards for fun and also because of the intellectual engagement – albeit gentler games like whist rather than anything untoward - so why not try to learn a new card game to play together? www.trickstercards.com. will allow you to play cards with grandparents or family who are isolated elsewhere.
Microsoft are offering free access to Minecraft here.