Students' lockdown masterpieces feature in national exhibition

Three photography students from Oldham Sixth Form College have been selected to have their work feature at a national exhibition. 

'At Home' is the Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA) National Photography Exhibition 2020, which launched yesterday (Thursday). 

Running until Friday 19 June, it will feature photographs taken by 140 students from 46 colleges across the country and will run from 4th to 19th June 2020.

A-level students at the Union Street West college were encouraged to enter an internal competition for the opportunity to be entered into the exhibition to showcase their work. 

There were 48 fantastic and diverse entries in total - all of which can be viewed on the college's website here: https://www.sixthformcolleges.org/411/at-home. 

The college say it was an extremely difficult task to whittle down the entries to select three finalists but chose the work of Daisy Kenway, Aimah Naqvi and Sanchia Edwards. 

Daisy and Aimah chose to portray images of lockdown from within their home.

Daisy’s work (pictured below) titled ‘Days of lockdown’ was inspired by the concept of lockdown making time seem to move differently with hours, days and weeks all blending together.

Aimah focused her piece (pictured below) - called 'Repetition' - on the idea of everyday feeling the same, repeating activities over and over, day in day out.

Sanchia reflected on a different angle of lockdown with her piece titled, 'Oh how times have changed', choosing to take her work outside to showcase how ‘normal life’ has changed with how quiet the world/streets around us have now become.

Anupa Joshi, Course Leader for Photography, feels that this exhibition really helped to give all students involved a purpose and inspiration whilst in lockdown: "During these challenging times, this project allowed our students to reflect on their surroundings and focus their energy on a positive outlay. It allowed them to demonstrate their creativity with some truly inspirational outcomes." 

Gillian Keegan, Apprenticeships and Skills Minister, said: "This has been a difficult time for the entire country but this exhibition is a wonderful example of how creativity can flourish in the face of adversity. It’s great to see how these sixth form students have captured the experiences of lockdown from a young person’s perspective. A huge congratulations to all exhibitors and I wish them every success for the future." 

Main image:

Sanchia Edwards's piece entitled 'Oh how times have changed'.