Eltham College is delighted to announce that Year10 student, Bleddyn, has been successful in the Discover Articulation competition finals and was announced as a winning participant in this national competition, specifically the research prize which was one of only two prizes available.
Discover ARTiculation Challenge is a national annual competition dedicated to engaging Key Stage 4 students with art and developing their confidence and ability to express their opinions, thoughts and conclusions. The programme, established in 2006 by the Roche Court Educational Trust, now based at The National Gallery, London, and constitutes a key part of the National Gallery’s work to reach out to communities around the UK and play a bigger role in the wellbeing and education of the nation.
Bleddyn was announced as one of the winners out of 8 finalists chosen by Judges from the University of Leeds and their partner galleries.
Studying Art at Eltham College develops transferable skills such as problem-solving, creative thinking, experimentation, critical analysis, research skills, resilience, making and building skills, team work and debating. Bleddyn was supported throughout by our dedicated staff, Ms Heraghty who is Director of Art and Mr Cavendish who is Head of Academic Scholarship and Teacher of Humanities.
Here is what Bleddyn has to say about his experience;
On February 11th, I visited Folkestone with 4 other Art students as part of a school trip to watch David from Sixth Form compete in the regional heats of Articulation. We saw the unique presentations of all of the competitors, which were very interesting and inspired my own when we got back.
Afterwards, we were told about the Discover Articulation competition which was for our age group, and entered after seeing the Sixth Form articulation competition. The first round was to create a 3 minute recorded presentation on the artist of choice. To decide on an artist, I looked through my GCSE sketchbook, finding the artist who I felt had to most meaning behind their work that I could discuss in my presentation – I chose Todd McLellan.
From there, I made a powerpoint and a script, and recorded my first presentation. Particularly, I was looking at who Todd McLellan is, why he makes the work he does and the meanings in his work. After finding out that I was through to the final, I did some further development, as the new presentation was meant to be 5 – 7 minutes long now, so I had more time to discuss the artist and his work. A suggestion I thought was very helpful was that I should contact that artist himself, and I emailed Todd McLellan a set of questions which he then answered and I used in my presentation. For example, I asked him to tell me about some artists that have inspired his work, and I used these to analyse his own work. To prepare for the final, I practised it a lot, working on public speaking and delivery to refine it.
For the final, it was live on zoom, and after 20 minutes of deliberation form the judges they had decided. After announcing the runner up, the judge said that I had won the competition (specifically the research prize which was one of the two prizes available). It was good to participate in this competition as I could practise not only public speaking and delivering a presentation well, but in depth research and how to put together a speech or presentation.
