LOETB TY Digital Arts Programme Awards Held In Tullamore.

Schools around Offaly and Laois were toasting success recently at Esker Arts in Tullamore, when they claimed big awards at the inaugural LOETB TY Digital Arts Programme Awards ceremony.

The Oscars style event was designed to showcase the work of LOETB TY students, and the work they’d produced as part of the new TY Digital Arts Programme in the areas of Filmmaking, Podcasting and Virtual Reality, with the best entries claiming “Oscars” and a piece of the generous €5000 prize fund.

The new programme was developed and supported by LOETB with Offaly and Laois County Councils, along with FilmOffaly and Laois Arts Office; and supported teachers and students with training and equipment to produce creative digital content.

FilmOffaly’s EU funding enabled us to supply the participating schools with smartphone filmmaking equipment. We set the schools a filmmaking challenge with the prompt “This must be the place” and there was an incredibly high standard of entries and interpretations on the theme.

Portlaoise College was the first runner-up announced, while St Fergal’s Rathdowney’s entry, ‘People’ claimed the other runner-up Oscar. However, the top prize went to the outstanding ‘The Echoes of Us’, from the super talented TYs of Tullamore College – an epic sweep across the rich heritage and history of Tullamore Town. The filmmaking team took to the stage to collect their Oscar and €1500 prize fund.

The last award of the night – Best Performance in a Short Film – was presented by LOETB Director of Schools, Linda Tynan. It went to Ashleen Gorman from Clonaslee College, for her performance in the short film ‘A Lesson Learned’.