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EHS Culture Day: Many Cultures, One Community
Senior School | Sixth Form | Laurels Association
11 April 2025
On Tuesday, 8 April, the Senior School celebrated Culture Day with a wide range of cultural activities across year groups. A big thank you to Anna G in Year 12 for capturing the day’s highlights.
Year 7 created their own Eurovision featuring countries such as Italy, Spain, France and Germany. Each form made bunting to represent their country, learnt a song and choreographed their own dance to present to their peers at the end of the morning.
Year 8 spent the day in Art making posters about China for the National Geographic. They used macro lenses to get the finer details in photography to ensure the best possible pictures and painted blossom trees in Fine Art.
In contrast, Year 9 were outside enjoying the sunshine while playing cricket and researching indigenous groups, later presenting their findings to the other teams.
Year 10 spent the morning analysing poems from South Africa, playing games in Maths relating to South America and made a podcast about which country they would like to visit and why.
After a thought-provoking morning learning about different cultures, we all gathered in the Octagon for a special assembly to appreciate each other’s cultures through song, dance and poetry.
As we entered the Octagon, we were greeted by dishes created by students from Year 7 to Year 9 on the board from different ethnicities. This created a gateway into why tradition and celebrating our culture is important, thoughtfully spoken by the student leadership team and the EDI team.
British culture is made up of different cultures and traditions coming together to make a diverse community through food, language, tradition and background.
During the assembly, Sienna and Grace (Year 10) and Cierra and Zoe (Year 7) shared their personal stories about identity and belonging. Sienna spoke about the beauty of different cultures, while Grace discussed how to be ourselves in such a diverse and ever-changing world. Cierra took a different but intriguing approach and did an EDGE talk on resilience and the hardship of representing your culture She reminded us that despite our differences, “we all have the same colour blood.” Zoe showed us how belonging can be a beautiful concept and that we should not be divided by culture but rather brought together.
On the other hand, we can also be united through dance, and this was shown through the many dances that were beautifully executed in the assembly. Performance included a Year 9 Chinese dance, a temporary Indian dance performed by Year 8, a Bollywood dance, and a Bhangra dance from students in Years 7 to 10. All performances showed resilience and were both elegant and sophisticated.
To end the day, we had the incredible opportunity to hear from guest speaker, Jassa Ahluwalia, author of ‘Both not Half’. Jassa spoke about the challenging stereotypes that comes with mixed heritage and how this creates the feeling of being stuck between two worlds. Sharing his story and the life experiences that made him who he is today, Jassa spoke of how invisibility motivated him to be heard, leading him to create the slogan ‘both not half’, emphasising that you can belong in both cultures not just half in each. He left us with three key points: national identity is your story to tell; life isn’t binary; and self-discovery often goes beyond just yourself.
His words reminded us that by embracing our culture, we can shape our stories for the better. We ended the day with a vibrant runway, celebrating diverse countries and
cultures through music, dance and joy.
Culture Day
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