Living Heritage -
Upper Moutere School
Our Story, Our Place
'Massive': 150 Years in 9 minutes of Dance and Drama
The senior students of Room 6 used the Motueka School Cluster Arts Festive to create our story over the last 150 years. They combined our history with fantastic dance, drama and music to tell 'Our Story - Our Place'.
Download the 'Massive': 150 Years in 9 minutes of Dance and Drama video (WMV 101MB)
Room 6, Year 7 & 8 Inquiry Learning Process
Our People Our Place
As we had elected to perform in the Motueka Schools Cluster of MASSIVE production and as 2007 was the 150th Reunion of our School, we decided to gain information about our area Upper Moutere. We interviewed older people who had lived and currently live in the area about what school and life was like when they were younger.
We read about the history of the area and our school. We researched on the Internet also.
From there we used music, dance and drama to perform the story of Sarau / Upper Moutere.
Our Performance started with the Maori collecting flax from the swamps.
The German Settlers arrived and were flooded out on numerous occasions. We re-enacted the building of the Hotel, Church and the School. Sarau had a name change during World War 1 because of the German connection. In 1919 the first Moutere cluster Athletic Sports Day began on the closest Saturday to Armistice Day in November, this day continues to be held and the fastest runners from each school compete against each other for the Peace Shield.
Hops and grapes are now playing a huge part in the economy of this area.
Our performance culminated in celebrating the 150th birthday of Upper Moutere School. We also performed this at the Reunion on Saturday and we had a letter from an ex-teacher who taught at Upper Moutere 45 years ago.
She quoted “I will always remember the tableau to music of 150 years in nine minutes! Well done to all.”
