The Arts

​​Merrimac State High School prides itself on the exceptional standards attained by its students in the Arts. Through our program, we strive to empower students with creative learning to reach excellence with pride.

Our students are offered a wide range of subject choices within the Arts: Media, Visual Art, Creative Arts, Performing Arts, Drama, Dance, Dance Summit, Music and Instrumental Music. Students may select to study a combination of the Arts, in order to explore all fields and gain a firm foundation of skills in readiness for further specialisation.

We encourage students to achieve their personal best, producing results they can be proud of and skills that will transcend into future learning, experiences and career paths.

Visual Art

Our Visual Art students produce exceptional pieces that are frequently displayed in school-based, regional and state exhibitions, including the Energies Exhibition, Winter Arts Festival, Senior Art gallery evening and Gold Coast Show. Students are provided with the majority of practical resources through the school resource scheme. Students are also offered extended learning experiences through Artist in Residence programs and workshops. 

Media

Media classes allow students to enjoy innovative learning as they explore the use of programs available in the Adobe Cloud. As an Adobe school, our students are provided licencing to Adobe programs through their resource scheme. All students studying Media become proficient in using Adobe Photoshop, and develop extensive skills in Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premier Pro and Adobe Rush. Student work is entered into competitions each year, and showcased through our annual Winter Arts Festival and regularly on our schools social media. 

Drama

Drama interrogates the human experience by investigating, communicating and embodying stories, experiences, emotions and ideas that reflect the human experience. It allows students to look to the past with curiosity, and explore inherited traditions of artistry to inform their own artistic practice and shape their world as global citizens. Drama is created and performed in diverse spaces, including formal and informal theatre spaces, to achieve a wide range of purposes. Drama engages students in imaginative meaning-making processes and involves them using a range of artistic skills as they make and respond to dramatic work. The range of purposes, contexts and audiences provides students with opportunities to experience, reflect on, understand, communicate, collaborate and appreciate different perspectives of themselves, others ​and the world in which they live. 

Dance

Offering Dance in our speciality designed Dance Studio, students explore performance, choreography and alternative understandings of the world around them. Dance is a unique subject that interrogates the human experience and allows students to challenge their understanding of the world by provoking alternative ways of seeing, thinking and doing. Dance uses the body as an instrument for expression and communication of ideas. It encourages the holistic development of a person, providing ways of knowing about oneself, others and the world. 

Music

Our music students have exclusive use of our four soundproof rooms to enhance the learning experiences. Music is an engaging art form that uses sound and silence as a means of personal expression. It allows for the expression of the intellect, imagination and emotion and the exploration of values. Music occupies a significant place in everyday life and all cultural and societies, serving social, cultural, celebratory, political and educational roles. The study of music combines the development of cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains through making and responding to music. The development of musicianship through making (composition and performance) and responding (musicology) is at the center of the study of music

Extra-curricular

To allow students to apply their classroom teachings and to extend their learning, we offer numerous extra-curricular activities. We have a long tradition of staging outstanding, full-scal​e musicals every second year as well as entering many Eisteddfods.

Each year we offer

• Workshops for each subject
• Arts excursion to QPAC to view live theatre
• Live Model Art workshops
• Junior and Senior Dance Troupe
• Creative Arts Club
  
• Drama Theatre Club
• Choir
  
• Eisteddfod Competition entries
• Starbound Competition
• QUOTA Eisteddfod
• Presentation Night
• Senior Art Exhibition evening
• Cluster Workshop with Mr George Ellis
• Twilight Tunes
• QPAC Drama Performances
• DANZA