Music & Arts
Music, drama and debating have always played important roles in education at Cistercian College Roscrea. Students are actively encouraged to get involved in the arts including a Choir, Traditional Irish Music Sessions, Folk Choir, Musicals, Plays, and the College Orchestra. Arts gives students the power to express themselves, to question, to confront, to explore and to challenge how they think about the world.
Music
Cistercian College is renowned for its long standing musical and creative traditions. As part of the music programme on offer, students have the opportunity to use the state of the art facilities, taking lessons in a wide range of new and used instruments available. The key events for the College Orchestra and Choir annually are the College Musical, the Christmas Carol Service in the Abbey Church and the Musica Vivit concert which takes place in the UL Concert Hall in Limerick.
The college offers tuition in a total of 10-12 instruments should a student wish to avail of this outside of class time. Comprehensive music facilities are offered within the College, including teaching and practice rooms, two pipe organs, several pianos and many instruments, as well as a library of instrumental and orchestral music. Students have the time and opportunity to progress their study of a particular instrument or take up a new one.
Performing arts help promote interpersonal skills, develop certain skills and characteristics such as empathy and compassion for others. The creativity involved in performing arts extends to emotional creativity and can open students to new ways of seeing the world. In musicals there’s less of a focus on winning or losing, and more about working together as a team towards a shared performance goal, as well as the student’s individual journey of development.
Debating & Public Speaking
Students are given the opportunity to not only take part in individual College competitions including from both individual College Competitions such as the prestigious Silver Medal (Junior House) and Gold Medal (Senior House) but also as part of teams that compete with great success in national competitions in English, Irish and German Language debating.
