‘Doorstep Saints’ ensuring a lockdown legacy for St Andrews graduation week

Students from St Andrews University are being “door-stepped” by official photographers this week as part of their virtual degree celebrations.

The students, whose degrees will be conferred virtually this summer due to the Covid-19 pandemic, are all being pictured at home, from a safe distance, from Monday to Friday as they officially become graduates of the university.

The “isolation-creation” initiative was the brainchild of the Graduation 2020 remote creative team, who developed the idea after being inspired by the doorstep photography of Glasgow-based Caroline Weiss.

Caroline will capture Glasgow student Alexandra Mcnicol at home with her family, while Londonbased student photographer Toby Lowenstein will visit Zoë Nengite in Kent.

The remaining students will be captured with socially-distanced photo shoots on their doorsteps in Edinburgh, Arbroath, Kirkcaldy, St Andrews and the surrounding area by university photographer Gayle Mcintyre.

While only a small group of students living in Scotland could be featured, it is hoped the Class of 2020 students around the world will take part with their own doorstep photo shoots and share them via social media.

Three of the students featured in the celebrations include prize winners Morgan Brooke-johnson and Zoë Nengite, who will receive the Principal’s Medal this year, as well as Fife Provost Prize winner Laura Paterson.

They are joined by new Students’ Association president Dan Marshall and staff members Becky Ballantyne and Alice Haworth, who have juggled workloads and family life alongside their part-time degree studies.

The soon-to-be graduates featured in the campaign, which will be shared on the university’s Instagram channel, are from Dundee, Leeds, Kirkcaldy, Lancashire, London, Belfast, York, New York, Glasgow and Ghana.

As part of the project, the group was asked to share their memories of being a student at St Andrews, and what they will miss most about the Fife town.

They included Gemma Crowe, 23, from Dundee, who graduates this week with a first class MA (Honours) in mathematics, Jake Leitch, 22, from Kirkcaldy, who will graduate with an MA (Honours) in social anthropology and Alice Evans, 22, who will be conferred with her first-class MA (Honours) degree in management while in quarantine in St Andrews, having just returned from the US where she has spent the summer with her family in Colorado.

The so-called “Doorstep Saints” will be joined virtually by more than 1,900 students from around the world being officially conferred online all this week, with the Class of 2020 due to return to St Andrews to take part in graduation ceremonies in person in June 2021.