Lizzie Sevenoaks - Class of 2006

We are lucky to have a Perkonian working at SWPS in the Art Department.  In this interview, Lizzie tells us a bit about her time at SWPS and what happened after she left us.

While at SWPS Lizzie particularly enjoyed Art, and this led to her taking A Levels in Art and Design, as well as Geography and Psychology.  After leaving SWPS Lizzie went to The Chelsea School of Art (UAL) and completed a 1 year foundation Art and Design course, specialising in visual communication and culminating in a short animation project at the end of the course.  After completing her foundation course Lizzie took a gap year and came back to SWPS for a short contract to work as an Art Technician. She then travelled to India where she volunteered at a boarding school for deaf children in Tamil Nadu.  She worked there for six months enriching the lessons with art projects. Lizzie then went on to travel around North India and South America.

Lizzie went on to take her three year degree course BA (Hons) in Animation Production at The Bournemouth Arts University. Lizzie explained that in Year 1 she completed hand-drawn animation and in Year 2 she worked with the Year 3 students as part of a small team on their animation films.  At the end of Year 2 the students would pitch their animation ideas to be worked on in Year 3. Luckily Lizzie's animation pitch was successful and when she started the final year, she had a small team of Animators, a Producer and an Editor to work with on her stop motion animation film, Roots of the Hidden. This film was later accepted in over 30 International Film Festivals including Hiroshima and Anifest festivals.

As Director, Lizzie presented the film at the Anifest festival in the Czech Republic, RiverRun Festival in North Carolina and Premier Plans Festival and the Hiroshima Animation Festival in Japan. 

In 2011 she won the Best Cut Animation at the London International Animation Festival and was sent by them to be their representative at the Hamburg Animation Awards.

Lizzie went on to become a freelance animation artist in London and then moved to Devon for a children’s TV series called Poppycat. This series was created digitally and through this experience she decided that her preferred method was hand-crafted and produced art. After this project wrapped, Lizzie came back to London and when a job at SWPS in the Art Department was advertised, she came in for an interview - and the rest is history.

In her current role, Lizzie facilitates for the Art Department and works with students from Year 7 through to Year 13.  She helps the students with their digital editing and gives valuable input into projects for GCSE and A Level students.  She also assists our students who take up photography – teaching them how to print their photos in the SWPS dark room. Lizzie teaches various printing techniques to Year 9 and 11, including lino printing, which is now one of Lizzie’s new passions. Lizzie has curated the Chertsey Exhibition and facilitated the holiday Art workshops which we run at the school. She also designed and painted the backdrop for our whole school production of Annie, where she enlisted the help of staff and students to paint this over the course of a weekend. The SWPS School magazine is produced yearly and Lizzie has a lot of involvement with designing pages for this. As well as her role as Art Technician, Lizzie is also an Artist in Residence at SWPS where she is able to undertake her own artwork in the studios and discuss her process and practice with the students.  We hope you enjoy seeing some of Lizzie's artwork, and you are most welcome to come in to see more of her art or the students' art by contacting mbradbury@swps.org.uk