Four creative students from Kendal College saw off strong competition from other colleges to claim a top award national award.

Matthew Tucker, Catriona Fish, Izzy Pye, and Caitlin Rigney were presented with their gold medals at the WorldSkills UK Finals ceremony in Birmingham's NEC on Saturday November 19.

The team took the top accolade in the ‘Video Moving Image’ category, which saw them create and produce a four minute long film during the two-day competition.

The brief had to address future successes, dreams, and achieving potential through creativity and innovation.

The team chose to produce a spoken word piece in three sections looking at the past, present and future.

They filmed around the busy NEC, taking in exhibitors, equipment, visitors and other students in attendance, and even finished the film with more than an hour to spare – impressing the judges with their impeccable timekeeping.

Dan Hodge, Digital Learning Manager at Kendal College was with the winning students in Birmingham.

He said: “I can’t praise them enough. The quality of work was absolutely amazing from start to finish and the way they handled themselves both in the hotel and during the competition was a credit to the College. We’re all over the moon for them and the win was much deserved.

Matthew Tucker, 20 from Dalton-in-Furness was responsible for the editing and hopes to go onto University to specialise in editing when he finishes college. He said: “It was without a doubt one of the best and worst things I have ever done! It was non-stop pressure and the deadlines were really strict, but it all went surprisingly smoothly and to win was just the icing on the cake.”

Seventeen-year old Izzy Pye from Lancaster directed the film. She said: “The timescales were the most challenging; we’re used to having longer periods of time to produce work so we’ve never done anything in just two and a half days before. I think I was in shock for a good hour after we won. The whole competition was pretty amazing and seeing so many people carry out different skills was overwhelming. It was an incredible experience and I would recommend it to anyone.”