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A Short Synopsis.

Calam' dresses like a man, totes a gun and drives the Deadwood City stagecoach.

Well-meaning, but disaster- prone, she tries to help the local saloon proprietor out of a jam by promising to fetch a music-hall star from Chicago.

An hilarious comedy, it nevertheless has many tender moments and some very famous numbers, including "Secret Love", "Black Hills Of Dakota, "Deadwood Stage" and "Windy City".

" Calamity Jane" performances:

Wednesday 20th November - Friday 22th November.

Doors open at 7.00pm.

Tickets available from the School Office.

Adults £10, Concession £8.

Everyone welcome.

For more information about the show click here.

On Monday 21st October our Year 12 pupils attended Blackout, a theatre production written by Davey Anderson, about James, a young man with some very serious issues in his life.

Blackout is a performance produced by the Lyric Theatre in association with the Department of Justice, NI Prison Service, Probation Board NI, PSNI & Hydebank Wood College.

The Show’s director, Philip Crawford, explained how the show doesn’t aim to tell pupils what is right and wrong rather it challenges them to imagine if all the events dramatized happened to them- what would they do? He described his delight at seeing our pupils, “Actively engaged with the Lyric production to bring home a very hard- hitting message as they watch James spiral from a lonely and withdrawn teenager into a young man whose personal circumstances and reactions to adversity lead him into drugs and alcohol, resulting in charges of assault, arson and attempted murder. The play ends when James is sentenced to 3 years of probation rather than a 10- year Custodial Sentence. The ending is appropriately ambiguous and designed to initiate further discussion.”

This is the fifth year that the Lyric team have taken the show around NI schools; this month alone they have played to 44 audiences. The pupils watched a 25 Minute performance followed by a Q and A session with two young men with real life experience of custody and coping with life afterwards. The five actors in Blackout were Peter Heenan, Cillian Lenaghan, Kathy McGarry, David Paulin and Anna Warke.

The Dominican show allowed one of the actors, Anna Warke, the chance to return to her old school for the first time. Anna expressed her delight to be able to take part in today’s multi-media production. Since leaving Dominican Anna has completed a degree and graduated from the Arts Educational school, London. Prior to her involvement in Blackout, her professional stage debut, she played the characters of Snide and Lara in Torben Betts’ “It Never Happened”. She can also be seen in “A Slice of Life”, a short film by Michael Gilhooly.

Anna encouraged pupils to watch the video of what happened the night before James was arrested at bit.ly/preshowfilm and to find out the realities of life for a young offender in Hydebank at vimeo.com/lyricblackout. She explained how one of the key aims of the show was to encourage pupils to start to talk and to challenge young audiences with a strong anti- drugs and alcohol message.

Mrs Heaney, Our Head of Pastoral Care, spoke of her delight at securing the visit of The Lyric Theatre for the first time to Dominican College and she thanked the production team for complementing and reinforcing the school’s pastoral work. She hoped to be able to invite the company back to school and that support from our local council and local PCSP would enable more schools in our area to benefit from this production in future.

The evening of Thursday 3rd October saw Year 8 pupils, their parents, families and teachers join together in celebration to mark the beginning of the year 8 journey here in Dominican.

The theme for the mass was the power of dreams.

Prior to the Mass, all our Year Eight pupils individually designed personal dreams which decorated the walls of the assembly hall. Their chosen dream, represented their uniqueness their personality and their aspirations.

Our celebrant on Thursday night was our College Chaplain - Father Raymond and the special celebration coincided with his twentieth anniversary as our Dominican chaplain. This special evening will only be repeated when many of these pupils take their leave of Dominican in May 2026.

Fr. Raymond told our Year 8 pupils that they too must pursue and find their beautiful dream and how God would both bless their dreams and help them to realise their dreams. He asked pupils to consider what God’s dreams for them would be.

A group of our Year 8 pupils performed a special drama which focused on the importance of sharing love and how love only becomes love when it is a shared gift.

In his homily Fr. Raymond told the story of three trees to illustrate the differences between what we might want for ourselves and what God might want for us each of which. Each tree had a big dream which seemed to be frustrated as they were chopped down; only later would they realise that they each played a key role in the Christ story.

Fr. Raymond spoke about his deceased father, Joseph as “a quiet man”, much like the Joseph in the reading and showed pupils a small statue of the sleeping Joseph to illustrate the importance of giving your dream to God and contemplating how to make God’s dream come true.

The post communion reflection challenged pupils to have big dreams and the courage to persist in pursuing them. Each year 8 pupil was given the gift of a Dominican book of prayer and reflection produced as part of our recent centenary celebrations.

Ms. Ronan concluded the evening by thanking parents for entrusting the school with their children and welcomed them all into a new Dominican family. She paid special tribute to the work of Fr. Raymond as school chaplain and thanked the RE and Music departments for all their dedication in preparing the evening’s celebration. Most of all she thanked our newest Dominican parents for entrusting us with the gift of their child’s education.

Well done to all our Year 8 pupils who read, sang and provided the music for this mass.

Thursday 3rd October gave our Year 10 pupils the chance to develop their digital and entrepreneurial skills for the C21st and to help guide and direct them towards careers in Digital technology.

Causeway Coast and Glens Council launched this Year’s Young Enterprise Digital masterclass in Dominican College based on the very positive impression made by our pupils in last year’s initiative and competition. The mayor, Councillor Sean Bateson was present today for the launch of this Year’s Digital Youth initiative and the local council are once again sponsoring the event.

Also present today were representatives from Zymplify, All State, Startacus and Youth Enterprise NI.

Carly Warke from Zymplify hosted a presentation all about the Portstewart-based company and how marketing automation fits into the current Digital Revolution we are currently living in, she told the Dominican pupils that “We’re delighted to be here”.

We were also delighted to welcome into school Carol Fitzsimons the chief executive of YENI for the launch of this year’s programme.

Pupils were introduced to the new technologies of Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence before being set a group challenge.

Mr. Peter McDaid, Head of ICT at Dominican College explained how our year 10 Pupils were asked to “Design and develop an app for a niche market harnessing the new technologies. Firstly, pupils had to agree on a product, develop and defend a business case and then deliver a presentation of their idea to fellow pupils and judges. This work brought together a wide range of skills from across the curriculum including ICT, communication, entrepreneurial skills and designs skills.

Six groups on the day were selected by the judges to pitch their business canvas to the wider audience outlining what their product is, how they would fund it and why it would succeed”

Judges paid tribute to the professionalism of the pupils and the quality of the ideas they produced.

 
The winning Dominican group: Joy, Holly, Molly, Keeva, Clare, Eliza and Alice will now have the chance to refine their product and presentation ahead of the grand-final.

Well done to all our pupils today for their ingenuity, energy and enthusiasm and to all today’s facilitators who made this a day to remember for our Year 10 pupils.

Mr McDaid concluded the event by congratulating the pupils and assuring them “The facilitators were hugely impressed by the conduct and enthusiasm of the pupils and I felt very proud of all your work today. Dominican College was the ideal venue to launch this year’s nationwide initiative”.

Following on from relationships developed during the Beach Walk, today our new Year 8 pupils had the opportunity to meet with their U6 “Buddy” who will help ensure a positive transition for them as they commence their new school.

Today also gave our Junior SVP group a chance to welcome the new Year 8 pupils to our school. Mrs Dallat and Mrs Willighan explained how they felt that while so much of the work of this group is targeted on helping those outside the school; today they thought it would be beneficial to reach out to help our youngest pupils. The group had a coffee morning with our new year 8 Pupils and gave them a chance to sit and chat with the U6 pupils who will provide them with friendship, leadership and mentorship during this key year of their Dominican journey.

Our year 8 pupils have been very excited about the prospect of meeting their new “Buddy” and pupils have been carefully matched up to ensure that our most senior pupils can provide help with organisation, friendship and support to their junior counterparts.

As a school we are delighted with the way our Year 8 pupils have settled into their new school and all the challenges associated with transition and change.

Our Year 8 pupils will celebrate their special Start of Year Mass on Thursday 3rd October with Fr Raymond our school Chaplain with the theme of “Dream Big”. We look forward to welcoming our Year 8 pupils, their parents and families. 

Our annual School Beach walk took place on the gloriously sunny afternoon of Friday 20th September and, once again, our entire school community, in line with our school ethos, walked together in support of social justice. Our Year 8 pupils had a chance to meet and walk with their U6 buddy and this process will continue in PD class next week.

 For more images and details click here