Students paint a poor picture of Edinburgh College of Art online degree show efforts
Final year students at Edinburgh College of Art have painted college bosses as cheapskates over their attempts at hosting an online virtual graduation show.
The traditional graduation show is a huge affair, bringing together the works completed over four years of hundreds of students from the art, design and architecture schools at ECA.
The show is a platform for budding artists hoping to embark on careers in their chosen field and an opportunity to celebrate with friends and family, but due
to Covid-19 restrictions ECA were unable to stage a live show this summer.
Disgruntled students say ECA’s attempt to host the graduation show online was haphazard, incomplete, hosted on an outdated website platform and was a poor representation of students hard work.
Undergraduates pointed to similar virtual graduation shows put on by Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen and Glasgow School of Art which they claimed were far superior and a proper recognition of students efforts compared to ECA.
Now the students have launched an alternative online showcase, named Alt_D, which they say will be user-friendly and easy to access. The platform goes live on 10 August and has received hundreds of submissions
Fourth year painter and student spokesman, Louis Lisle, said: “ECA sold us a false dream that their virtual degree show would be a real celebration, something to look forward to, but when we saw it we were absolutely gutted. It was difficult to navigate, clunky, some people’s profiles were missing, images were wrongly labelled and it was hosted on a very outdated platform.
“Other schools of art around the country had made a real effort but ECA’s appeared to have been done on the cheap and it was very disappointing. We appealed to the ECA Principal pointing out this was not fit for purpose but the attitude was everything was fine and there was no willingness to change anything.
“After collectively feeling underwhelmed and disappointed by the Edinburgh College of Art’s online space, we took it upon ourselves to create our own. That is why the idea behind Alt_D is to celebrate the wonderful talent of this year's cohort in our own, democratic terms. Our main aim is simple - to create an accessible online exhibition platform which is clean, user-friendly and, most of all, exciting.”
A spokesperson for Edinburgh College of Art, said: “When it became clear that a physical show could not take place, we spoke with graduating students to rethink what could be done to give their work as much exposure as in previous years.
“The result is the ECA virtual show, which showcases 2,500 pieces of work from 28 degree programmes and has created online portfolios for each of the 300 graduating students. In a testament to the strength of the work on show, our data suggests that visitors to the site are staying longer and exploring more than on previous Degree Show websites.
“We are continuing to work with our students under these exceptional circumstances and are listening to their views on the virtual degree show hub. We remain committed to staging a physical show when that becomes possible.”
www.degreeshow.eca.ed.ac.uk/2020/