“ I was forewarned,” she says of the time immediately prior to moving to Winchester, but she was equally reassured that her“ Frenchiness” would add a refreshing touch. Her innate philanthropic streak was immediately and instinctively pounced upon by Clare Talks, Director of Community Service, who convinced her to take on the Blue Apple Theatre. She said she would try, and after her first Monday evening taking the boys down the road, she saw Winchester for the community that it is, and absolutely loved it. Community Service usually takes place on Wednesday afternoons, as a substitute for CCF. However, the Blue Apple Theatre requires boys, and Coline, to give up their Monday evenings, for two hours, on a volunteer basis. No boy is forced to do it, yet no matter how great the academic pressure, boys continue to sign on to the ever-growing waiting list. The Blue Apple Theatre Community Service option is open to those in VI Book 2 and VI Book 1. There is always a don in charge of Community Service options, but it is the boys themselves who are vested with the responsibility for getting themselves to this particular community service activity, where they are very much encouraged to develop the confidence to form strong relationships with their fellow actors. Not that it required much encouragement, according to Coline, for after the initial walls and insecurities are broken, there is a huge amount of shared fun and camaraderie to be had.“ The boys gain a lot of confidence from the activity, and I myself gained a lot of confidence through acting,” says Coline.“ They can often be so busy with their day-to-day school lives that they forget what the application of the school’ s values is about. The Blue Apple Theatre reminds them of that.” Coline has noted during her time at Win Coll that, beyond the lessons learned in the div room, or indeed through extra-curricular activities, it is through the strength of the Community Service programme that boys truly learn how to develop. But she has also noted the immeasurable value that service for the wider community has, not just for those receiving, but as much for those who are giving. She had been invited to speak of her experience with the Blue Apple Theatre in Chapel, one morning, where she told the boys of a Canadian philosopher by the name of Jean Vanier, who wrote Accueillir notre humanité(‘ Becoming Human’). She referred to the writer’ s encouragement to all of us to have the courage to break the walls that surround us in order to be free to discover our common humanity.“ When we love and respect people,” Coline recites,“ revealing to them their value, they can begin to come out from behind the walls that protect them.” Winchester College has the potential, and some would sadly say the right, to have very big walls indeed. A charming old boarding school in the heart of Hampshire would have every ability to alienate those around them from the wonderful experiences that lie within it, whilst also preventing the boys from interacting with the bountiful world around them. Thankfully, the ethos of the founder of the school, who lent his name to our collective, ensured that those walls were kept as low as possible throughout its history. He would have agreed with Coline during her lesson, and with Vanier, that to include rather than exclude others, we should try to befriend the vulnerable, welcome their gifts, learn from them and feel transformed, as this is the only way to achieve a simpler and more profound understanding of what it means to be human. The nature of tangible service towards the wider community runs deep in a school that has traditionally produced more academics and archbishops than CEOs and Prime Ministers. Whether it is directly in the subconscious syllabus, or whether it lies in the housemaster’ s choices of the boys that join the house each year, pupils are encouraged to find their art and manifest it fully, both by the school and by their peers. It is perhaps in the very breeding of such a community that the boys themselves find activities such as the Blue Apple Theatre compelling enough to queue up for on Monday evenings. And perhaps it is in the opportunities that such communities foster that those who arrive as teachers learn as much about themselves as the students do, as Coline would testify.“ If it hadn’ t been for Winchester College, I don’ t know whether I would have ever had the chance to experience such a thing in my life.”
The Wykeham Journal 2016 45