The Skyframe Awards celebrate emerging digital artists, transforming one of London’s largest suspended LED canvases into a platform for new voices.

The programme has been developed to provide a public platform, real-world experience and expert mentorship for the next generation of emerging digital artists. Each year, we work with animation, filmmaking and game design courses at partner universities, who share the open call with their students. Applicants submit a portfolio and a response to that year’s theme, rather than a finished piece, and from that pool we select a small group of finalists to take forward.

Once selected, finalists are given a budget and several months of dedicated support to develop their work. Over the summer, they take part in workshops and one-to-one feedback sessions, including a day on-site at Fen Court with artist Ben Sheppee, Executive Creative Director at Observatory, to help them understand how to design for such an unusual and expansive screen. Many are working with the scale, perspective and public nature of the Skyframe canvas for the first time, from having no fixed “top” or “bottom” to the way the piece needs to work for people approaching from any direction.

Finalists also get access to the same 3D previsualisation tools used by our judging panel, letting them test how their work will look and move across the space long before the public ever sees it. Every piece then goes through a Harding test, an industry-standard check for photosensitive triggers, to ensure it’s safe to display on a public canvas seen by thousands of people a day.

Our judging panel this year was Carlos Cabrera, Head of Production & Founding Partner at Scott & Irwin; Frances Darwin, Senior Creative at Journey; and Ben Sheppee, Executive Creative Director at Observatory. Each judge reviews the finished pieces alongside a short interview with the artist about their work and process, scoring entries against a set of shared criteria to decide the winner and runner-up.

This year’s finalists have spent the summer developing original works around the theme of Depth and Light: Vanishing and Appearing. Getting ready for September’s showcase, they’ve been testing rough cuts on the Skyframe canvas at Fen Court, with guidance from Ben Sheppee throughout.

Our finalists:

Alex Hughes – “Tunnel Lights”
Annie Wang – “Head in the Clouds”
Isobel Yit Ling May – “Lonely Light Show”
Mem Barlow – “A Moment to Breathe”
Peige Yu – “Travel Stories”

This year’s winner was Annie Wang, from UCL, and Isobel Yit Ling May, from UCA, was our runner-up. Congratulations to all of our participants, whose beautiful pieces will be on display until the end of September at the Skyframe.

The awards are supported by Generali, Generali Real Estate, Munich RE, BNP Paribas Real Estate, University College London and the University for the Creative Arts.