Landlocked Mermaid

Back in the summer, we had a chat with a friend of mine, Niamh, about her EPQ . She planned to make a sculpture highlighting the plastic pollution issue . The exhibition for her artwork was at the beginning of last month, so I thought it was high time we caught up and had a chat about it. Last time, we met in the picturesque village of Norton-in-Hales and went for a stroll in the summer sunshine. It was a bit grey and drizzly this time, so we met in the local cafe, The Hideout , for coffee and a catch up. Her final sculpture was a shark; frame shaped by chicken wire and filled with plastic bottles collected from the college campus. I bet you can guess my immediate response was 😍. She chose this design because it was the most striking of the ideas she'd put to paper. The shark is an iconic image and familiar to the public and she, quite rightly, argued that "scary attracts more attention". She wanted something recognisable and, taking inspiration from the famous ...

Meet Niamh. She is a local A Level student about to go into her final year of college. I’ve known her for quite a while, I used to work in the village where she lives. So when I found out about her EPQ and its subject, I had to get in contact and ask her a few questions! Tell me, what is an EPQ? “It stands for Extended Project Qualification, you get an A Level out of being creative. You can get a grade from doing a brain fart of a question and researching that. You can do an essay, you can do an art project. The whole is point is to document your whole journey from beginning to end.” There is a smaller version available at GCSE called PQ, culminating in a 5,000 word essay. The EPQ essay is 7,000, unless you are submitting an art project, like Niamh. She will still be documenting the journey, which is where most of the grade comes from. So it’s almost like a dissertation: research and independent study culminating in either a physical project or an essay. So wh...