Home Ensembles and music groups Saturday music and arts centres Queen’s Cross Arts Centre

NMPAT Queen's Cross Centre

What can you do at Queen's Cross Centre?

Welcome to Queen’s Cross Centre, which runs at Northampton High School in Hardingstone. We run a wide range of music and drama classes for children from age 5 upwards.

Music, dance and drama are life-long skills, with the benefits of being involved in them from an early age now well documented. The centre is a fun, well-resourced place to be, where all classes are run to a high standard. There is no better way to spend a Saturday morning!

Centre timetable for 2019 to 2020

Centre Timetable 2019 to 2020 (PDF 165KB)
Descriptions of activities (PDF 58KB)

Music

Our music groups for those who already play an instrument include:

We cater for all abilities from beginners to more advanced players.

Don’t play an instrument? At least not at the moment.

For those who do not play an instrument it is possible to join in some of the above groups playing a percussion instrument.

Our recorder and ukulele groups welcome complete beginners, and we have instruments you can borrow to try them. Similarly our Djembes at Dawn group is open to everyone regardless of standard.

If you would like to learn an instrument from scratch (flute, clarinet, violin, etc.) please add your name to the sheet in reception, or email us, and as soon as we have enough interest, we will start a complete beginner group for that instrument. We will probably be able to lend you an instrument to play, at least in the initial stages.

Art

Many aspects of art will be covered during the year, including drawing, paints and pastel colours. You will also be able to design and make craft items as well.

Drama

Through Centre Stage, drama is available throughout the morning and covers speech, drama creative movement, and musical theatre. Activities include improvisation, role-play, scripted work and mime.

Come for a taster session

Every child is entitled to a no obligation taster session as this will give them a chance to experience the centre before committing themselves. We therefore welcome you to come and see us any Saturday during term time, and one of our staff members will go through our timetable and show you around.

Where and when

Where do we meet?

Northampton High School
Newport Pagnell Road
Hardingstone
Northampton
NN4 6UU

When do we meet?

Saturday mornings during term time: 9:15am to 12:15pm.

Term dates for the current academic year

NMPAT Centre weeks 2019 to 2020 (239KB)

In the event of unavoidable closures, information will be via the centre on our Facebook feed.

Contact details and subscription information

The centre head is local strings teacher, Tom Smith.

You can email the centre: queenscross@nmpat.co.uk

You can also contact the main NMPAT office.

Before you start

There is some important information we would need in order to safeguard your child to the best of our ability. Please complete and return it to your Centre Head.

Centres Essential Details form (Word 132KB)

How much does it cost?

Please see the payments page for details of membership subscriptions and how to pay.

Help us reduce costs by paying online through Parent Pay and please consider Gift Aiding your membership subscription so that we can avoid raising subscription rates unnecessarily.

How to pay – ParentPay shop >>

Policies

You can find our child protection policy, code of conduct, and photographic policy on our policies page.

How to find us

Coronavirus and NMPAT

Monday 29th June

The NMPAT office is now open again and is being manned daily to answer your calls as well as respond to your emails. This is an important step towards being able to open the building again, but at the moment we are still not able to hold any rehearsals or deliver any lessons on site. If you do come to visit us you will be invited to observe social distancing and additional hygiene measures.

We are talking to schools about when we may be able to start visiting them again and are making plans. We look forward to the time when we can also be back in school delivering face to face lessons and rehearsals.

All activities, events and regular face to face teaching remain suspended and our events are cancelled up to the end of term:

Our first NMPAT on-line Virtual Centre will meet on Saturday 4^th July
County Auditions are underway with a new virtual audition format and we have received lots of video auditions
Plans for all activities to start in September are underway, either virtually, or face to face

Almost all the teaching staff of the Trust remain furloughed, although HMRC have given permission for some on-line sessions to take place on a voluntary basis. Some people have asked about donation channels and these remain open at Virgin Money Giving, Local Giving and through Parent Pay. We really do appreciate your support.

Please stay in touch with our NMPositiviT team who are posting daily on our social media sites. We are aiming to find ways to keep you busy, practising and engaged in what we do. Check out #NMPositiviT.

We look forward to a time when we can all come together and begin to make music and theatre together again. Until then, stay safe, stay healthy and keep practising.

Peter Smalley, Chief Executive

Monday June 29th