Filmmaker Steve McQueen to create portrait of London's Year 3 pupils

21 Sep 2018

4 mins
Steve McQueen's Year 3 class photo - Little Ealing Primary School, 1977
Steve McQueen's Year 3 class photo - Little Ealing Primary School, 1977

Director Steve McQueen, Into Film, Tate Britain, Artangel and A New Direction are inviting every primary school in London to take part in one of the Oscar®-winning filmmaker's most ambitious works to date - the Tate Year 3 Project.

Turner Prize-winning artist and 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen, together with Tate Britain, have just announced one of the world's most ambitious contemporary art projects: a portrait of an entire age group of Londoners, capturing tens of thousands of Year 3 schoolchildren from across the capital using the traditional school class photo.

Over the next nine months, each and every one of London's 2,410 primary schools with Year 3 pupils is invited to have their Year 3 classes specially photographed for the project, with the resulting artwork going on display at Tate Britain and around London in 2019, free for all to visit.

Free sessions will be taking place in primary schools between October 2018 and July 2019, with every participating school invited to visit the exhibition and see themselves at the heart of the nation's collection of British art.

We at Into Film invite all London teachers of Year 3 students to participate in this ground-breaking project.

Year 3 students have been chosen by McQueen as it is a milestone year in a child's development, where they form a sense of identity and become more conscious of the world beyond their immediate family. The project aims to capture this excitement, anxiety and hope through the traditional medium of the class photograph with their teachers. In bringing together so many of these class photographs from a single year, the work will embody the diversity of the city in which the artist grew up, and illustrate the next generation who will go on to shape London's future.

From November 2019 to May 2020, Tate Britain will be exhibiting these photographs at an exhibition that is free for all to visit. It will be a celebration of the tens of thousands of young people who will make London their own in years to come.

Make sure to check out our new supporting resource for the Tate project, Photo to Film

Steve McQueen on set with Chewitel Ejiofor
Steve McQueen (left) filming '12 Years a Slave' with Chiwetel Ejiofor

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