We spend a lot of time waiting. On Thursday 30 June, as part of Enrichment Week, pupils from Year 8 were challenged to combine music and art to explore an exam waiting room, creating an installation designed to transform the viewer’s perception of The Space and reflect on their experience of waiting.

In an exam waiting room, people are thrown together in anticipation. Each person is there for a purpose. The secretary, bored and strict, points the way. A collection of people wait for the exam: some grotesque, each betraying their emotions. A young girl waits for her sister to emerge from her exam. A six-year-old banjo player holds his instrument confidently in readiness for his Grade 5 exam. A drummer nervously listens to his piece for one last time on his iPod. A student wears a top hat and colourful glasses, keen not to conform. One man, on his way to hospital, finds himself in the wrong waiting room. This awkward mix of characters, realised in papier-mâché and imaginative costumes, find themselves frozen in time and space, all waiting.

What are the characters be thinking? What might they be saying? What is their relationship to each other? Why are they here? What sounds might they hear whilst they wait? These questions were the inspiration for soundscapes, devised and recorded during the day. Fragments of conversations, the ticking of clock, scales and arpeggios, tuning instruments and heartbeats were combined and transformed, and the musicians explored new combinations of timbres and new sounds on traditional instruments. Electronic effects disguise the familiar. Each piece seeks to capture something of the experience of the exam waiting room.

In a day of extraordinary inventiveness, creativity and industry, the Year 8 pupils created a powerful and darkly humorous installation that strongly and (perhaps especially for teachers and parents) challengingly reflects the pupils’ view of exams.