Lockdown Transformations

Make-up Artistry lecturer Alana Pignatiello has been keeping busy during this unusual period. Like all lecturers, she has been trying her best to teach her students remotely to get them through the last few months of their courses. She has had to juggle this with her family life, and her new-found fame as a viral sensation…

Here is her story.

When we first got sent home from college nearly 8 weeks ago (how has it been that long already?), I must be honest. I was relieved to be home safe in my own house with my family. The constant news and media updates of deaths and speculation was starting to send my anxiety through the roof. 

The only thing that was niggling at me, and everyone else I’m sure, was how am I going to keep my students engaged remotely? How do we keep them motivated and not going into a depression?

After discussing with the make-up team, we decided to do Instagram make-up challenges every other day and the students could pick the theme.

It was a great success and a lot of the students and lecturers got involved and would be messaging as to when and what the next challenge was.

I found having these challenges really motivated me as I was getting to be creative on my own face and I would love the couple of hours’ peace I would get to do it. It was my mindfulness.

While doing the college collaborations, I started doing my own thing, taking suggestions and requests from people as to what to do. I did a Joe Wicks transformation to thank him for keeping the nation’s children busy for half an hour every morning. After that, all of my requests were for more transformations: The Queen, Boris Johnson, Nicola Sturgeon and Lewis Capaldi.

It was after I posted my Lewis Capaldi makeup that things went a bit crazy.

He retweeted the picture and the next morning I had messages and emails from journalists from newspapers and BBC Scotland asking if they could cover the story. It was all a whirlwind and all a bit surreal.

The online reaction was hilarious, some people loved the Lewis transformation and some people thought it looked like Susan Boyle. You can’t please everyone!

This Morning then got in touch and asked if I would go on and do a live Phillip Schofield transformation and talk about how this all came about. It was a dream to go on This Morning, I adore Holly and Phil and to get to speak to them and turn into them was amazing.

It was wonderful to talk about the students and the college and highlight how we are all discovering new and creative ways of engaging with our students. The whole experience has been quite overwhelming as I never started doing this to be seen, I just wanted to engage my students and keep myself motivated and busy.

Seeing the student’s reaction has been the best tonic for me through this whole lockdown. They are the ones I wanted to motivate and inspire and I think it worked. If all that comes out of this is that they keep busy, push themselves to try new things and stay focused on their studies, then I am one very happy lecturer.