Student Retreat Day 1

Student Retreat 2008 Day 1
15 May 08
Living Room

The Arts House

Student Retreat - a 2-day training workshop for CFA group leaders - finally took place on 15-16 May this year!

The first day of the retreat was proved to be a full day packed with fun and laughter (and of course we learnt useful skills too)!

Everyone was anticipate to find out what to expect for the day!

And... our leaders started mingling with each other BEFORE the ice-breaker!


After each of them to groups, they paid full attention with Jacey, who was explaining how this complicated competitive ice-breaker was going to be like...

Silhouette of Jacey explaining the rules of the game

Luckily, we had Eng Kuang, former exco of Jazz Band to help us facilitating the game!

Ok, so... HOW TO PLAY?

In short, various groups were supposed to buy and collect lost exhibitions (in card form, of course!) and return to various museums (shown on game map) in Singapore.

So how to advance in the game map and win? You could either pay and become the museum owner - each time an exhibit is returned you got to advance; or simply collect the exhibits and return to various museums to more forward!

Of course it was not that easy...

First, you have to earn money so that you can buy and collect exhibits... Go to Juwita/ Sheila and be tested out on some music/dance/drama related knowledge!

Then, you could see many groups coming together, trying to negotiate with each other, so that they could collect the "complete" exhibit - you must collect all 4 exhibit cards before you can return to the museum.

Then, it was like a MARKET! All the groups were frantically fighting to return exhibits to the museums (with iris at the bottom of the pic, trying her best to update museum status and the game map) so that they could advance in the game!

As you could see from their faces - this group didn't win but they could have - cos they were too busy collecting the exhibits that they didn't have enough time to return to the museums!

... and this group won! They were very smart - they earned, and paid to become the owners of MOST museums. Then, all they did was just to help others complete the exhibit cards, wait for the exhibits to be returned by others, gain spaces and WIN!

Then, we had a workshop by external professionals - teaching us on team dynamics and communication skills!

Here they were - looking bright and happy early morning!

First, they started with another round of ice-breakers, which made all of us running around and grouping in pairs...

in groups of 3s... and many more!

Of course, there were definitely some who didn't manage to get into groups, and here was the forfeit - running across the carpet in an interesting way - this girl volunteered to do a chicken dance!

Next, it was the most challenging part of the workshop. All our students were divided into 3 teams to compete with one another. Each group were supposed to send out 2 leaders to brief the rest on what the game was like... and that's all the instructions were given!

HOW TO PLAY

Within each team, all members were seated in two lines, with 3 vacant chairs connecting the two lines, forming a horse-shoe shape.

To win, they must step-by-step, shift the people on the left side to be seated to the right side, and vice versa.

Of course, the challenging part was that each member was only allowed to move to the adjacent vacant chair, or jump to the next vacant chair (if there was a person in between) and at any one time, if there were two people belonged to the same side seating side-by-side during the shifting stage, the game had to restart!

One group decided to discuss and try it out first with the some non-living objects...


... while another group chose to move a few people, then discuss about it when they got stuck.


Finally, this group found the way to complete the game! And they wrote down the lessons learnt from this (can be very frustrating) game.


Then, all 60 student leaders gathered back into one big group to accomplish one task - to shift this long pipe up and down, with one person contributing two index fingers each!


Again, this game only seemed easy. Along the way, you would start to realize, to have all 60 people to be synchronized in one timing, one movement were much more difficult than you thought!



And this workshop ended with some nice massage to each other's shoulder...


... and a cute fun mass dance!


Then, LUNCH TIME! Food was fantastic!

After lunch, we decided to arrange a tour in the Art House for the students - to let them know more about this building - The Arts House.

They went to the most historically significant space of The Arts House - Chamber - where the former parliamentary meetings and debates took place.


Then, they toured around the Play Den - a black box theatre; the Gallery - a glass hall with frequent visual arts exhibition; and the Council Room - the room with highest order, formerly occupied by our Minister Mentor, Mr Lee Kuan Yew.
And they said, "Why not a tour and dinner at '1827' as well?" Oh, how expensive was that!

Following that, Mr Iskandar Ismail has kindly offered us a talk on stage presentation - how we present ourselves on stage is very important. Christine, our Director also gave us some tips on this topic, too!

Finally, we had a discussion for the NUS Arts Festival 2009. Many conductors and choreographers came down especially for it, and here is a photo of the busy musicians we managed to catch after the discussion (Of course more than 4 conductors/choreographers attanded! But most were gone before we knew it!)
From Left: Mr Lim Soon Lee (Music Director & Resident Conductor, NUS Symphony Orchestra), Mr Lum Yan Sing (Conductor & Artistic Director, NUS Chinese Orchestra), Rajandra Vadivale (Music Director, NUS Indian Instrumental Ensemble) and Dr Chua Chee Yong (Associate, NUS Harmonica Orchestra).

Stay tuned for the activities on the second day of Student Retreat 2008!

Photos: Siew Ling/ Iris