Music and Textile Design

Drama across St Mary's School

Land Girls performance gallery

Art and Photography

Successful entries for the Rotary Young Photographer Competition

Black History Month Competition Portraits

Alternative inspiration

This year required the Visual Arts Department to think creatively to ensure our students could continue to build links with industry professionals, whilst restrictions prevented our traditional face-to-face workshops and trips.

We were delighted to host Zoom workshops with illustrator Lauren Hellier on sea creatures and a further workshop focused on Tom Streeter's career in wildlife photography. Both offered brilliant insights and tips on how to pursue a creative career.

Student responses to workshops

Portraits Preserving Experiences (PPE) in Lockdown

This unique project was designed to celebrate the heroic efforts of key workers, who tirelessly went about their business throughout the pandemic, the emotive images create a lasting record of a strange time in everyone’s lives.

The unique process used to create the touching images began with Ms Conroy, Head of the Visual Arts Department taking socially distanced portrait photographs of each subject and then developing these with digital drawing techniques. Each photograph was manipulated and drawn using filters and a stylus that allowed Ms Conroy to draw on the computer as if it were paper. Year 13 students at St Mary’s then worked in traditional media creating their own artistic responses to the digital portraits. The finished work culminated in a stunning exhibition at St Mary's ‘No. 47’ Art and Photography Centre.

Explore the artwork here: