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QE’s Lockdown Art Competition attracted more than 100 entries from pupils of all ages, with Year 7 boy Joshua Wilkinson’s self-portrait taking first prize.

The entries came in a wide range of media, from oil paint to digitally manipulated images, and the boys’ artworks featured a similarly broad choice of subjects, from still lives to dreamscapes.

In addition to the current online exhibition on the School’s eQE platform, QE will be looking at ways of displaying the winning artworks around the School. They will also be reproduced in the pupil-produced magazine, The Arabella.

Head of Art Stephen Buckeridge said: “We were really impressed, both with the scale of the response and with the quality of the entries, which included a great deal of diverse, creative and thoughtful work.”

The competition categories included: animal; portrait/figure; landscape/cityscape/seascape; still life/botanical; abstract/non-representational and scenes of everyday life.

Boys were asked to create two-dimensional artworks in any medium and submit an image electronically. The entries featured pencil, watercolour, oil paint, felt-tip, fine liners, pastel and collage, as well as photography and digitally manipulated images.

Joshua’s self-portrait [pictured top, with the competition poster] was the first he had done using oil paints and was based on a photo taken on a smartphone. It took him seven hours over the course of three weeks. “I tried to capture likeness, while also using rough paint strokes and layering to make the painting look less realistic. For the background, I took inspiration from Vincent van Gogh, using his signature style.”

Art teacher Jeanne Nicodemus praised the “presence and concentration” shown by Joshua in and through his artwork. “I also enjoyed the texture and handling of the painting. I could see his enjoyment of the material, with delicate gradient details to the expressive swirls in the background.”

The runners-up were Kovid Gothi, of Year 8, and Kai Pentecost, of Year 12, whose entries are shown right above and left respectively.

Kovid explained what he had set out to achieve: ““I wanted to capture the bright tones of the leaf and metallic lid against the smooth glass.”

Ms Nicodemus said: “Kovid’s classical still life with its observed detail…enables you to appreciate the changes in light and shadow with his impressive handling of coloured pencil. To me, the white background conveys a purity and lightness with a silent stillness and focused contemplation.”

Kai produced his artwork – oil pastel on a wooden board – as part of his work for the Royal Academy’s attRAct scheme, which is a year-long programme of practical workshops, tutorials, studio visits and exhibition tours. Every year, two QE Year 12 Art students apply for a place, and Kai was successful this year.

Kai explained that the artwork reflects his dreams, which are frequently dystopian in nature and in which, since “the isolation of lockdown”, he has felt “the serenity of being alone but the frustration of wanting to get out”.

“Kai’s imaginative interior, exterior composition to me is full of feeling in a surreal, dream-like, emotive composition,” said Ms Nicodemus.

The category winners (with some comments from Ms Nicodemus) were:

• Portrait/figure – Bhav Rambhiya, of Year 12, for his pencil drawing entitled INSPIRATION
• Land/city/seascape – Anik Singh, of Year 7, for a watercolour, Staring into space: “I can almost feel the rain on my face”
• Still life/botanical – Artem Apostoli, of Year 9, for an untitled black & white photograph
• Natural Form – Kailun Zhou, of Year 8, whose artwork entitled Glamour World was created using colouring pencils, pencil and fine liners: “almost a whole story compacted into a final image”
• Abstract/non-representational – Vignesh Rajiv, of Year 9, for a pencil drawing, Geometric symmetry: “like a kaleidoscope of patterns, textures and three-dimensional shapes”
• Everyday life – Venthan Kumanan, of Year 9, for his pencil drawing entitled Living Life: “an impressive use of manga-style drawing, conveying a momentary sense of helpless frustration, isolation and rage”.

As the first major step towards the progressive wider reopening of Queen Elizabeth’s School, boys from Year 10 have today returned to the site. Headmaster Neil Enright and all the senior staff came out to welcome them.

In line with national Government policy asking schools to prioritise on-site provision for those with public examinations next summer, QE’s Year 10 return first, to be followed by Year 12 from 29th June.

Huge efforts have gone into readying the campus to allow social distancing and to ensure a safe environment for pupils and staff to return to. And although all boys from these year groups will be coming in, they will not all be on-site at the same time, since this is not allowed by the guidance. Instead, large groups – typically half the year – will be attending at once.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “We are very happy indeed to have boys back on the site in numbers. Bringing them back is a step we have taken only after conducting a substantial process for assessing and mitigating risks. My thanks go to our Head of Facilities Management, Mrs Silvia Shann, and her team for all they have done to get the site ready.”

Deputy Head (Pastoral) David Ryan said: “We will now be able to provide these boys with important in-School support, supplementing the remote learning that has been taking place through our eQE online platform. I know that Year 10’s Head of Year, Dr Tim Waite, their tutors and other staff have all been looking forward to spending time with them face-to-face again.

“We recognise the challenges that boys have faced through having to work largely in isolation over recent weeks and months, so it is tremendously satisfying to be able to offer these two year groups the opportunity to socialise safely with each other again.

“We will be able to hold some enriching, extra-curricular activities on site again and also, crucially, to provide them with face-to-face social and pastoral support: we are determined that our very developed support and guidance programme remains central to the boys’ experience of life at QE.”

The returning year groups will initially sit end-of-year assessments covering boys’ learning over the whole academic year. The results will, on the one hand, help teachers consolidate the learning boys have done during lockdown by providing useful data to inform ongoing priorities for the classroom. On the other, they will inform the boys’ own choices of A-level subjects and, for Year 12, their decisions about applying to university.

Deputy Head (Academic) Anne Macdonald said: “The Year 10 boys and their teachers have done brilliantly to adhere to the timetable and to keep up the pace as they have progressed through the GCSE curriculum during the lockdown period. The end-of-year assessments will be important in charting the course forward from this point.”

While it is not possible for other year groups to return to the site yet, the full programme of timetabled remote learning for Years 7-9 continues, together with the extensive pastoral support that is also offered through eQE. Tutors are busy with bespoke tutorials being delivered through Zoom and the latest round of senior staff pastoral checks for Years 7 and 8 starts this week, also on Zoom.

The preparations for the return of Year 10 and Year 12 have included, among many other measures, the:

• Introduction of new cleaning regimes
• Reduction of venue capacities to allow for social distancing
• Plentiful health and safety signage
• Re-allocation of outside space
• Installation of ‘mag-lock’ doors in the Main Building to reduce the need to touch doors.

A QE trio have won a major prize in a digital competition focused on the future of space travel.

The team, who are all from the same Year 9 Pearce form group, took the Innovation Award in the Galactic Challenge One Small Step competition with their design for a vehicle to explore the Moon’s surface in 2030 in preparation for establishing a human settlement there.

Several other QE teams and individuals also won awards in the competition, which was organised by a team led by Old Elizabethan Aadil Kara (2010–2017), who is Chair of Galactic Challenge.

Last year, QE hosted a Galactic Challenge event at the School and had planned to do so again this summer until the Covid-19 restrictions forced its cancellation. Instead, Galactic Challenge ran the special digital competition.

QE’s Head of Physics, Jonathan Brooke, said: “This was an exciting competition, requiring boys to exhibit creativity and scientific understanding. And at a time when everyone’s horizons have been shrunk because of lockdown, it also gave boys a timely opportunity to turn their gaze to the stars.”

Entrants were asked to produce a design for a vehicle that would be home to four astronauts during a six-month mission, taking into account factors such as how electrical power would be provided and what would be needed to support the astronauts’ living conditions.
Vignesh Rajiv, Maxwell Johnson and Sai Sivakumar took the Innovation Award – one of only four major prizes open to their age group. They proposed HNHV, the Helium-3 Noisu Habitation Vehicle (pictured right and left).

In their award citation, the competition judges explained why they had chosen the team’s entry: “This interesting proposal identified Helium-3 as a potential material to be mined from the Moon as a future energy source. Vignesh, Maxwell and Sai’s design consisted of two halves each housing two astronauts; a creative way to separate the operational and habitable components of the vehicle.”

Aadil has a longstanding involvement with Galactic Challenge, a regional competition for younger pupils and a sister competition to the UK Space Design Competition (UKSDC). In his final year at QE, Aadil progressed from the UKSDC to the International Space Settlement Design Competition, hosted by NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Aadil graduates from Imperial College in Physics this summer.

Other QE successes in the competition included:

• Gold awards for two entries – Koustuv Bhowmick, of Year 8, and Krishn Bhowmick, of Year 7, for their VIXI design, and Vaibhav Gaddi, of Year 8, for his vehicle, which he named Caladenia Elegans (the elegant orchid spider)
• Silver awards to two Year 7 teams and a Year 8 team – Azmeer Shahid, Shuban Singh, Shivam Trivedi and Anish Errapothu, for Dark Voyager (pictured top); Daksh Vinnakota, Ved Nair, Ojas Jha and Keon Robert for Spatium Rimor I, and Year 8’s Ishtarth Katageri, Sachit Kori, Anirudh Terdal and Abhay Halyal for ML Pioneer
• Bronze awards for two entries – Pranav Haller, of Year 8, for his design, The Hermes, and Year 7’s Giuseppe Mangiavacchi, Trishan Chanda, Timi Banjo and Rayan Pesnani for Luna Rimor.

A QE competition inviting boys in lockdown to write essays or design posters about figures who helped others through previous times of adversity drew entries featuring a huge variety of inspirational men and women.

From Winston Churchill to Colonel Sanders (of KFC fame), and from civil rights activist Rosa Parks to the Prophet Muhammad, boys from the first three years at the School spanned the centuries and ranged across the world with their chosen topics.

And the subjects of the three winning entries – who were all women – equally had very different stories, with one being a world-famous scientist, one an Irish-born teacher who became an influential spokesperson promoting Indian national consciousness, and the third the heroine of an aeroplane hijacking.

The competition for Years 7-9 was run and judged by the School’s four Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Ambassadors, Sharvash Jeyaharan, Beker Shah, Vebushan Sukumar and Ukendar Vadivel, all of Year 12.

“We were amazed by the number of high-quality responses from all years,” they said in a joint statement as the results were announced.

In launching the competition, which they entitled TALK, the ambassador team had stated: “The past few weeks have been filled with uncertainty, disappointment and complete confusion. It can be hard to find courage and resilience in this time, but humanity has always bounced back.” They invited boys to write an essay of no more than 1,000 words or design an A4 poster featuring “someone from history that has shown strength and determination in hard times, who inspires you today”.

Year 7 winner Trishan Chanda wrote about Margaret Elizabeth Noble, who was born in Dungannon but became a follower of the Indian spiritual leader, Vivekananda. She devoted her life to service in India, where she ran a school, helped the poor during times of natural disaster and became involved in working towards India’s political emancipation. Her health broken by her efforts, she died aged only 43 in 1911.  The ambassadors praised Trishan for “writing a compelling piece about someone not well-known”.

By contrast, Year 8 winner Chanul Athukoralage’s subject was one of the world’s best-known scientists, Marie Curie, who was the first woman ever to win a Nobel Prize and who remains the only person to have won a Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields – Physics and Chemistry.

The judge’s praised Chanul’s “eye-catching” poster and described the Polish (and naturalised-French) pioneer of research into radioactivity, who died in 1934, as “an inspiration to the aspiring scientists of today”. In what Chanul described as the “greatest comeback science will ever see”, she overcame the devastating death of her scientist husband Pierre Curie in an accident in 1906 and went on to take the University of Paris chair that had been created for her husband and to win her second Nobel Prize.

Dhruv Chadha, the winning entrant from Year 9, related the story of Pan Am head purser, Neerja Bhanot, from India, who was shot and killed while saving passengers on her hijacked flight during a stopover in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1986. Earlier in the flight, she had hidden the passports of passengers on the flight so that the hijackers could not identify American passengers, whom they were targeting. When, after 17 hours, the hijackers opened fire and set off explosives, she opened one of the aircraft’s doors and started helping passengers escape, but was shot at point-blank range. “The story of her selflessness and humanity is moving – sacrificing her life for the 384 passengers of a hijacked plane,” the judges said.

The winners are being congratulated by their Heads of Year in their virtual assemblies. You can see their entries here: Trishan Chanda, 7U, Chanul Athukoralage, 8S and Dhruv Chadha, 9L.

Representatives of The Friends of Queen Elizabeth’s have joined their voices to urge fellow parents to dig deep to support the School on Founder’s Day.

FQE Executive Committee member Mrs Anna Westcott says: “This year, the need to raise funds is even more acute due to the severe impact of Covid-19 on the income of the School – like many organisations QE has been hit hard. Your donation will really make a difference, as every penny will count towards helping the School.”

Fellow committee member Mrs Rekha Essex adds: “Our boys are incredibly lucky to be part of this School and to be able to benefit from the facilities offered, so if you are able to support this fundraising initiative with a donation, however small, please do visit the JustGiving page to donate.”

Mr Willie Rodrigues, Chairman of the FQE Fete Committee, underlines the fact that if it were not for FQE’s fundraising endeavours, it would simply not be possible for QE to provide ‘a state school experience like no other’. “As parents,” he says, ”we see a brick building estate that is the ‘School’, but these buildings come alive to inspire, encourage and fulfil both the academic and non-academic aspirations of our boys. Imagine what the future holds for our boys with your continued generosity – even more so in these tough Covid-19 times – in aiding the School with its vision.”

As a parent ambassador, Mrs Westcott helps in the build-up to Founder’s Day by communicating FQE requirements to form representatives and other ambassadors – a process which helps bond the whole School community together, she says.

“The fete is our annual opportunity to raise funds for the enrichment and development of the School and pupils. Each year since my son has been at school, we have run the football stand. It has been a real pleasure and joy to see the faces of kids as they desperately try to win a football and how they use their intellect to work out the probability of pulling a winning ticket (only at QE!).”

While lamenting the loss of “the fun and the excitement of Founder’s Day in the open”, she stresses the need for parents to support its virtual replacement.

Mrs Essex added: “As a parent at QE since 2014, a keen supporter of FQE and parent ambassador, I have always been struck by the amazing fundraising efforts of the School and its community. The facilities offered to the boys are unparalleled and the School is constantly looking at additional ways to provide more to benefit its pupils.

“This ability to continue to improve the School comes from the steadfast support of the parents and FQE community through their generous monthly donations and fundraising for the School.” Although the fete – the biggest fundraiser in the School calendar, bringing in around £20,000 – cannot take place in its usual format this year, the School is still looking to raise an equivalent amount through the JustGiving page,” she says.