Video: Piccadilly Circus Screen Challenge - National Poetry Day

On 4 October, filmmakers, digital artists and animators convened in Piccadilly Circus for a rather unusual screening. This was the chance for the talented winners of our Piccadilly Circus Screen Challenge brief to see the results of their labour illuminated on the big screen. There aren’t many world-famous billboards but, with over 16 million people walking past it each day, Piccadilly Circus’s is one of them.

This year, we joined forces with the Forward Arts Foundation to celebrate National Poetry Day by showing a poetry-inspired film montage created by IdeasTap members. We asked for a visual response to the Charles Causley poem I Am the Song:

I am the song that sings the bird.

I am the leaf that grows the land.

I am the tide that moves the moon.

I am the stream that halts the sand.

I am the cloud that drives the storm.

I am the earth that lights the sun.

I am the fire that strikes the stone.

I am the clay that shapes the hand.

I am the word that speaks the man.

Here's what our brilliant winners came up with:

Geraldine Peclard responded with an abstract animation.

Leila Hussain's film captured the fleetingness of movements in the natural world through sped-up recordings.

Sam Barker did the opposite, using slow-motion 3D animation to explore the virtual interactions between light and nature.

Paul Carpenter chose to illustrate the text itself, presenting each line of the poem through bold visuals.

Ben Oren wove all the nouns of the poem together to produce an animation that looks at how the imagery of I Am The Song flows.

Carley Jane Edge's poster style illustrative images focus on the poem's narrative through a literal depiction of each line.

Camilla Greenwell responded with a series of images that echo the poem's themes of creation, creator and the natural world. 

Lucy Fry's depiction of landscape, light and seagulls captures the poem's atmosphere perfectly. 

Alex Horsfall used Photoshop to achieve the rough, hand-drawn look of her narrative animation.