RAG, or Raising and Giving, is an annual week-long event that takes place in City of London Freemen’s School. This year, the Lower 6 RAG Committee has worked extremely hard to plan many different activities across the school to raise money for charity. The charities chosen by the school are Wildlife Aid and The Royal Marsden, the Epsom and Ewell Refugee Network, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
This year also marked the return of the RAG week video – a film featuring the whole school showing just how fun all the events will be. The creator of the video, Will Smith, spoke to me about the 4 week-long process.
"A team of five of us took to multiple locations in the school to film as much content as we could. We had students and staff air guitaring, spinning on wheely chairs, lip syncing and just having a great time."
"There was a very positive buzz felt around the whole school. It had taken exactly 5 days to film all the content and we must have collected around 20 minutes worth of footage!"
"There were four drafts of the video before we were completely done. After about 4 hours of video editing, the video was complete."
"A lot of time, a lot of work but lots of fun!"
Here are some of the week’s highlights:
Tuesday’s treasure hunt was deemed very popular, and had students find clues around the school which led to an 8-letter word at the end. The architecture-themed Lego competition on Thursday also showcased talented pupils who managed to build impressive creations in such little time.
Top of the Pops was by far the most eagerly awaited event of the week. The tickets were sold out to see 7 departments go head-to-head with their own musical performances. This year Science were looking to defend their winning streak with One Direction’s hit ‘What Makes You Beautiful’, but in the end it was Maths who were crowned the winners with their BIDMAS rendition of ‘The Final Countdown’.
Form One pupils described the week as ‘amazing’ and ‘brilliant’.