A live photographic artwork created with students during Freshers 2026

Over two days at the University of Leicester Freshers Fayre, I created a large-scale photographic mosaic from more than 1,200 photographs taken by students attending the event.

Rather than arriving with a finished artwork, the piece developed throughout the Freshers Fayre. Students photographed themselves, their friends and their experience of the event, contributing the images that gradually filled the artwork.

The photographs were collected and assembled live using my Mosaic Builder system. As the two days progressed, hundreds of individual moments became part of a single image, allowing the finished work to act as both an artwork and a collective record of the beginning of the new university year.

The background image was created by the University of Leicester marketing team, giving the finished piece a strong connection to the university’s own visual identity while the photographic detail came directly from its students.

By the end of the second day, approximately 1,200 photographs had been gathered and brought together into the completed artwork.

The project forms part of my continuing exploration of how photography can move beyond documenting an event and become something people actively make together.