First year student, Lauren Klieff recently represented the College in the regional heats of the 2021 ARTiculation Prize, which was hosted this year by Watts Gallery in Guildford.  This national competition is organised by the Roche Court Educational Trust, who work with teachers, young people and specialist groups to develop confidence and skills by looking, thinking and speaking about art. 

Students who competed this year delivered a ten minute presentation online to an audience about a work of art, architecture or an artefact.  Adjudicators then assessed each presentation as a whole, looking at content, structure, delivery and the speaker’s original approach.  The adjudicator for this round was Alistair Burtenshaw, who is the Director of Watts Gallery’s Artists’ Village.

Lauren’s presentation was about the significance of the Camberley Obelisk, an 18th century structure which has been subject to a number of hypothesised purposes.  Lauren described her experience of the structure in its landscape and discussed the different purposes it may have had over the years, including possible links to local secret societies.  Alistair praised Lauren for delivering an extremely interesting presentation, which brought us all back to the power of observation and to paying attention to things that are close to us but so often overlooked.  Alistair also praised Lauren for asking us to seek new relevance in our own building heritage, describing Lauren’s overall presentation as ‘powerful’.  Unfortunately, Lauren was not selected to go through to the Grand Final.

Lauren commented, “I really enjoyed the competition because I was able to improve my public speaking and research skills.  As an unexpected bonus, the competition also got me in touch with other people interested in local history!  The experience itself was really interesting and the effort and passion of everyone involved made it incredibly engaging.  Although I did not make it through to the next round, the feedback I got on my presentation was invaluable.  If you get the chance to give it a go next year, you should definitely take the opportunity and see where it takes you.”