Page 9 - OM Newsletter - Issue 44 - 2020

DEVELOPMENT IMPACT REPORT
Music @ Malvern
All-Steinway School
We were recently presented with a very exciting opportunity to become an ‘All- Steinway School’ and to furnish the College with the finest pianos from Steinway & Sons. In addition to providing the instruments, Steinway will provide technical support to ensure that the instruments are kept in immaculate condition as well as offering academic support and potential access to masterclasses with Steinway artists. Malvern College will be established as one of only 16 schools in the UK who have adopted the All-Steinway concept and one of only 160 establishments worldwide. We are very excited to be starting our association with Steinway & Sons. The College is immensely grateful that the cost of this project has been fully funded through philanthropy by an extremely generous donor. At the time of writing, the pianos are being delivered to the College on 24 November. Watch this space for an update in the next OM Newsletter!
Music School
The Music School is a large Victorian building with a fascinating history, but it can no longer meet the needs of our pupils, our staff, or our audiences. Our vision is to undertake a major programme of refurbishment to create a Music centre of the highest standard, which reflects our commitment to excellence and consolidates our reputation as a premier establishment for music. The project forms the second of an exciting and ambitious four-phase project to develop our facilities for Music.
Cricket @ Malvern
Cricket Nets
We are grateful to all our donors, including OMs, parents and friends, who have generously contributed towards the fund to upgrade the outdoor cricket practice facilities on the Senior. Work started in November to replace four of the old, weathered nets and to construct ten new permanent, state-of-the- art retractable nets of the kind found on some county grounds, which means we can now recycle the temporary nets.
This significant improvement will make a material difference to the opportunities for our boy and girl cricketers: they will be able to practise for longer periods on the best- maintained surfaces, both artificial and grass. Furthermore, as the College looks to recruit the most talented sportsmen and women of the future, the new nets will reinforce our reputation for excellence and opportunity.
Rachel Heyhoe Flint Cricket Scholarship for Girls
After a 22-year England career including 12 as captain, the name Rachael Heyhoe Flint is as synonymous with cricket as any of the male greats; so what could be more fitting than for the first cricket scholarship for girls at Malvern College to be founded in her name? Lady Heyhoe Flint herself played on the Senior in several women’s county cricket festivals and her son, Ben Flint (1.87-92), played for the 1st XI. Furthermore, as a member of Malvern College Council for nearly ten years, Lady Heyhoe Flint was a committed supporter of the College.
The Malvernian Society and Malvern College warmly thank Ben Flint for his generosity in founding this scholarship, which the Malvernian Society is also supporting. As you know, the College already enjoys a fine reputation for boys’ cricket, but this scholarship helps put us on the map for girls’ cricket too. The scholarship got off to a flying start – the first girl selected, Grace Seedhouse, has completed her first year (although sadly there was no cricket played in the summer term) and the
second recipient, Bethan Manning, started at the College in September. Both are promising young players so we are looking forward to seeing them and future Rachael Heyhoe Flint scholars progress through the College and, who knows, we may have potential England internationals amongst them too.
Observatory
Stephen Hawking was one of the greatest academic minds of our time, but it is not perhaps so widely known that his PhD supervisor was Dennis Sciama (SH.39-44). In recognition of Sciama’s influence on modern cosmology, Malvern College is delighted to be able to re-furbish the observatory building, thanks to the generosity of a Malvernian Society donor.
The College already has a good telescope allowing Astronomy to be studied in school in the Foundation Year and it is part of the IGCSE syllabus for the Hundred as well as an option in the IB syllabus. However, because it has no permanent ‘home’, it needs setting it up, aligning correctly and dismantling every time it is used. As this takes a good hour at the start and end of a session, it is used only infrequently at present. Once the telescope is housed within the new observatory, it will be set up permanently and left in place, allowing our pupils and staff to use it much more frequently.
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