What a year!
The Art & Photography competition, 'Posctards from The Trafalgar Way' was launched in February 2020 with an original deadline of Sept 2020. No sooner had we started to promote it than - bam! Lockdown! No travel permitted, confusion and lethargy set in, home-schooling pressures, plus competition from a million new home-based pasttimes (banana bread anyone?) all dealt our plans a blow.
We decided to reconfigure slightly and extend the competition deadline to April 2021, giving our entrants the full range of seasons in which to photograph their scenes and contemplate artwork. This also gave us the time to contact a great number of schools, colleges, photography clubs, art schools and clubs and community groups on Facebook to try to secure a decent number of entries.
Sadly, in one category, the teen photography category, we never quite got there, and a decision was made not to make any award. However across the board, the entries for all the other categories came pouring in and we began to smile.
We smiled at the quirky entries, the genuinely funny ones, the beautiful ones and the ones displaying technical skill. Most of all, I smiled at the entries displaying most effort. So many new people had taken the trouble to research the story of Lt Lapenotiere's journey, to familiarise themselves with places and scenes along the way and to portray historical accuracy where it was required. In terms of achieving the objectives of The Trafalgar Way initiative, we were already winners ourselves because of this.
Thank you for being a judge
After the competition closing date, we began the work of shortlisting the submissions. Everything was carried out anonymously. A team of volunteers and co-workers helped with this and I must thank the following people for their (often quite significant) contributions to this process:
Kate Jamieson
Adam Preston
Ian Gregory
Rob Harding
Kaye Ford
Peter Turner and
Marcus Cribb
From these shortlisted entries the main judging then took place, with judges required to score entries according to different criteria. Again it was all done anonymously, so could not possibly have been fairer.
Meet our panel of expert judges here.
Judging is always a difficult blend of subjective appeal and objective appreciation. Our team of professional artists, photographers and media experts took their time and diligently worked to rank the finalists.
The 48 award winners
You can see the full list of award winners here, with each image title linked to the main gallery where all the award-winning entries are displayed.
Here are just a few of my personal favourites from the adult artists!
Taking flight © Mike Thomas
Martin Down towards Salisbury © Brady Turner
Rainy window View of Trafalgar Square © Harriet Lawless
Very big congratulations to all our award winners and to those who were highly commended. I have so enjoyed seeing all the amazing artwork produced and am so pleased that The Trafalgar Way has had a chance to be interpreted by so many people in such different ways.
Prizes are now being organised for our winners, and we hope to have a presentation ceremony in London before the end of the year for those with trophies and first prizes. The online gallery will remain on view until May 2022. We also hope to be able to sell prints or originals of the artwork and perhaps feature some of the pieces on goodies which you can buy in our shop. Watch this space!
