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A return to making things: The best work from the Leeds Met Art and Design degree show

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By Kristal Ireland, Head of Digtal

June 18, 2012 | 5 min read

Kristal Ireland, head of digital at Propaganda, finds less digital but a return to making things at this year's Leeds Metropolitan School of Art and Design degree show.

Adam Horwood puts Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg under the spotlight

Want to review your local degree show for us? Email cameron.clarke@thedrum.com.

I was lucky enough to be given a tour of this year’s work by Dr Rebekka Kill, Head of School of Art Architecture and Design at Leeds Met Uni and Aiden Winterburn, Graphic Art and Design Course Leader. The show this year was very impressive with some students showing real promise and producing some thought provoking, intelligent work.

Clear themes resonated throughout with sustainability, community and collaboration woven not only into the students' work but also the fantastic social media campaign run by the school to promote the show across the city via Twitter. The 9 Boxes initiative, which saw over 1,400 cardboard boxes being used to build an extensive display at the university, was accompanied by a Twitter campaign which opened up the show to a wider audience across Leeds. Taking the form of a virtual treasure hunt, it gave Leeds residents the chance to win key pieces of student artwork by locating mystery boxes hidden throughout the city.

One of the key differences for me from previous years was seemingly fewer examples of ‘digital’ work produced by students. I asked Dr Kill about her view on this and she said this year the school has seen “a real return to making things – people love the tangibility of experiencing real things”. We both picked up a rather lovey red velvet bound critical studies example and proceeded to stroke it, so I would tend to agree with her here. The work produced this year certainly reflected the desire to create real world experiences and used a wide variety of media. A standout example of this was a cardboard boat produced by William Jackson and Maxwell Ryan entitled “Showboat”, which I thought was particularly witty.

As someone who works predominantly in the digital landscape I reflected on this apparent change in attitude by the students and the school. In an environment when seemingly not a week goes by without someone claiming that ‘print is dead’, I think what we are seeing is a move toward a more immersive, integrated content landscape. Consumer expectation of digital experiences and content are just as high as the days when they could more readily access, touch and feel content in a print format. So in light of the experiential nature of the student work on show it does pose the question as to how the fresh blood into the industry can best convey their message in a multi format world?

The rise of interactive print devices such as augmented reality and the success of tools like Blippar shows an appetite for cross format content types and interactions. This provides up and coming students with a big challenge from a technical point of view, but also a wealth of opportunity from an imagination and innovation perspective. I discussed this notion with Aiden Winterburn and he mentioned that some of the students were concerned with using digital technology in their projects due to a lack of experience, although there were some very impressive uses of motion graphics at the show. So my opinion is that, and in synergy with the theme of this year’s show, more collaboration with the digital industry is required to break down some of the technology barriers students face. Good work is being done by Leeds Met to align itself with the creative and digital industry but it would be great to see more innovative technology companies and agencies getting involved to collaborate with students to un-lock their future potential.

My favourite three pieces from the show, and it was hard to choose because the standard was very high, are:

Leandra Johnson for her animated short “Ferrous” - a beautifully crafted piece showing real promise in the skill of designing intricate models combined with excellent film making

Hayley Smith for her photography and print production work with performance artist Louise Hill – a very interesting project, which explored the issue of race and beauty across multiple media formats and showed a great talent for producing provocative and intelligent imagery

Adam Horwood for his very topical project exploring the issues around online privacy and the power of Facebook, which I thought was insightful and very well articulated

Leeds Met did a great job on the degree show this year and the effort put in by the School to promote and market the show clearly demonstrates a pride in their students' work and a desire to encourage an ongoing dialogue with industry. I’m looking forward to next year already!

You can see more of the work on the degree show's website.

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