The Arts: Ngā Toi

Imagination, courage, and craft sit at the heart of the Arts at WHS. Students develop the knowledge and skills to create, interpret, and respond to artistic works with intention and growing technical control. They learn to make purposeful, creative choices and to understand how art forms connect people across cultures, communities, and generations.

The arts are rooted in identity, emotion, and storytelling. Students discover that artistic traditions have been shaped by people from many times, places, and cultures, and that New Zealand's artistic heritage, including Toi Māori and Pacific arts practices, sits alongside and enriches global traditions.

Follow WHS's arts Instagram page @whsartdepartment for a celebration of the many talented students and the work they do within visual art, music, dance and drama at our school.

​Years 9 and 10

Students create layered, intentional works that respond to cultural, historical, and social contexts.

Drama develops students' ability to create and refine dramatic works. They apply theatrical forms, techniques, and conventions to shape meaning and engage audiences, exploring traditions from political theatre to contemporary devised practice.

Music develops students' ability to understand and express meaning through sound. They work with musical techniques, genre features, and music technologies to compose and perform, engaging with music from diverse times and cultures.

Visual Arts develops students' ability to explore and communicate meaning through visual forms. They apply creative processes and visual conventions to produce works that express ideas with intention, refining their practice through cycles of experimentation and revision.

Across all strands, students analyse artworks using discipline-specific language and connect their learning to artistic practices from New Zealand, Pacific, and global contexts.

Years 11 to 13

Students deepen their understanding of language and literature and begin to specialise. Building on earlier learning, they may study English, or from Year 12 - Media Studies, Journalism and Communications.

They engage with increasingly complex texts, develop their literary analysis skills, and refine their ability to craft writing with genuine voice and purpose. Students explore how language and literature provide a space for expression, experimentation, and the examination of ideas that are evolving, contested, or open to interpretation.

These skills and experiences support pathways into tertiary study and careers in journalism, law, education, the creative arts, and public life.

Above all, we want our students to be thoughtful, discerning, and creative communicators: readers and writers who know that language connects them to the experiences, stories, and conversations of their communities and their world.

Extracurricular

Wakatipu High School's academic arts programme works in close coordination with extracurricular opportunities on offer to our students. Visit our Extracurricular Arts page or contact our Arts Coordinator, Katie O'Brien ​for more details.