Some schools mark an anniversary with a plaque and a speech. We threw a whole year at it!
Sixty candles. Sixty recipes. Ninety interviews, four hundred photographs, and one very memorable evening at the Park Hyatt. DESS Oud Metha’s birthday year turned out to be exactly that; a full, joyful, and occasionally tearful reminder of what six decades of community looks like when you gather it all in one place.
The birthday year opened in February when six decades of world events and Dubai milestones flashed before the eyes of 300 Year 2 parents in the Latifa Hall. The Spirit of DESS stage show was the curtain-raiser: 130 six- and seven-year-olds singing and dancing their way through Elvis, The Beatles and the Bee Gees, taking a cheerful swipe at teachers past and present with impersonations and one-liners, while a rolling timeline drawn from photograph and film archives played out behind them. Deputy Headteacher Victoria Atkinson, watching from the audience, said the Year 2s had set the bar high from that opening morning.
Parents, alumni, pupils and teachers then gathered on the playing field for the official launch assembly, where performances from past and present students were followed by the unveiling of the new 60th birthday logo. Designed by the talented Thea Pomeroy from Year 4, it captured the exuberance of DESS while nodding quietly to the fact that a past student from decades ago had designed the very first logo adorning the red and white striped uniform worn today. Then Headteacher, now Principal Catherine Dando described that kind of link as essential: keeping strong emotional connections between past and future.
The celebrations that followed showed-off our close-knit community team of teachers, parents and alumni. A popular Quiz Night got things moving, with more than half of those attending walking away with a prize. The Outdoor Movie Night screened Disney's 1964 classic Mary Poppins. At the 60th Fayre, children from Year 1 through to Year 6 showcased how the birthday theme had been threaded through their work across the curriculum.
In November, the Festival of DESS ran for a full week. Coffee and catch-up mornings, class visits and a Memorabilia Museum brought the community together to share memories and reconnect with the school's history.
Two books emerged from the birthday year. The commemorative cookbook, entitled Helping Your Insides Out, gathered sixty scrummy but simple recipes from across the school community: Henry Fuller's Grandma May's Cheese Scones, Emma Rutherford's Easy Pea-Sey Mini Quiches, Louwrens Marais's Louw's Sizzling Peri-Peri Chicken Livers, Alaina Chaudhri's Classic Cornflake Tart With Custard and Boyd Mackenzie's Boyd's Jammy Pudding among them. Sixty recipes for sixty years, packed with funky illustrations and the kind of warmth that says something true about this school: that food, like life at DESS, is about family.
The second book was altogether more ambitious. A Line In The Sand drew on over 90 interviews and 400 photographs to create a grand coffee table history honouring the students, parents and teachers whose commitment across six decades built the school we know today. Catherine Dando described it as crammed with quirky memories and tales that had waited patiently for up to 60 years to be told.
The year closed in style. At Port Saeed's Park Hyatt ballroom, 350 alumni, parents and teachers gathered for the Diamond Ball. Among them were Harry Atkinson, the school's first headteacher, and Vanessa Chapman, Sheila Duff Earles and Rhona Pyrke, three of the very first students whose fathers had been responsible for building the school back in 1963. Speeches, fabulous food, live music and a prize draw for luxury getaways and exquisite jewellery filled the evening. The Diamond Ball also marked the official launch of A Line In The Sand, waiting only for photographs from the evening itself before going to print.
Beneath the glitz, it was exactly what it was always meant to be: a room full of people whose lives DESS Oud Metha had touched, raising a glass to sixty years well spent.
Here's to the next ten. And the ten after that.