Larbert High pupils win nationwide Be Your Best Rock Challenge

A talented troupe of Larbert High pupils won a national performing arts competition aimed at addressing drug issues and preventing crime among youths.

The youngsters finished in first place in this year’s Be Your Best Rock Challenge after impressing judges with their interpretation of The Enchanted Forest.

Larbert High’s entrants displayed their acting and dancing skills as they saw off competition from eight others schools from Angus, Kinross-shire and Perthshire in the final of the contest, held at Dundee’s Caird Hall.

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The initiative, run in conjunction with Police Scotland, tasked pupils with producing a creative performance which outlined the temptations often put in teenagers’ ways and suggesting methods of overcoming such obstacles.

And the Larbert High students’ thoughtful production ensured the school collected the top gong.

Their performance was centred on a young girl who discovers a magical woodland where she is left mesmerised by the beauty of its plants and creatures.

She then gets lost and ventures deep into the forest where the girl encounters a snake which lures her into a darkened lair with its hypnotic powers.

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The main character is faced with a number of tough decisions to make, a situation the Larbert High pupils skillfully managed to equate to the choices modern-day teens have.

Judges were left in no doubt but to award first place to the youngsters after watching their performance.

Chief Inspector Gordon Milne, of Police Scotland, said: “I think the performances so far have been the best that I have seen and I have been coming here for about nine years. “They just get better and better!”

Kathryn Lindsay, head of children and young people service at Angus Council, added: “It has been absolutely amazing and I have been blown away again by the standard of the competitors. Their themes have been really powerful, hard-hitting and very topical.”