Inspired Festival is an annual celebration of our final year Arts, Design and Media students' work. The festival takes place across our campuses over two weeks and invites peers to view the wonderfully creative work that students put into their final projects.
We've rounded up some of the unique, innovative, and thought-provoking projects Inspired Festival 2023.
Doris van Rooijen, BA (Hons) Product and Furniture Design
Project Title: TILT
TILT is a contemporary, light-hearted dining range designed to encourage its users to focus on their food. The collection challenges you to remove media from the dining table and form new connections through the experience of eating. TILT needs your phone to function, encouraging you to come together and eliminate distractions.
TILT wants to bring joy back to the dining experience, encouraging us to enjoy our food and company once again.
Ellie Price, BA (Hons) Graphic Communication
Project Title: The Vagina Bible
Ellie’s project, entitled ‘The Vagina Bible’, was created to act as a vaginal health and hygiene guide. The vagina bible acts as a self-help guide on vaginal health and hygiene, intending to make an accessible editorial that people with vaginas would feel comfortable reading and picking up.
Ellie said: “Vaginal health and hygiene are important topics and removing the stigma surrounding things such as vaginal appearance and smell is absolutely vital. Unfortunately, because all of the information women have on hold at the moment is quite daunting and excessive, that information isn't being spread as efficiently as it could be. My main aim was to package all of this information into one nicely designed book, that would remove all the stigma surrounding vaginas.”
Jack Slater, BA (Hons) Costume Design
Project Title: Wondrous Stories
Jack’s project consisted of costumes that were created for and showcased live at Wondrous Stories, the opening act of the Birmingham 2022 Festival.
Jack Said: “I wanted to create characters that were based on Birmingham. I’m a Brummie born and bred, so I knew I had to represent Birmingham. I also really wanted to build in elements of graffiti art, as I’ve always been mesmerized by it, it’s so vibrant and unusual.”
Sachi Shetty, BA (Hons) Textile Design
Project Title: Medusa and Me
Medusa and Me is an interactive embroidered collection of fashion statement pieces for a luxury clientele, inspired by the myth of Medusa. It explores the power of emotion and the perception of the human senses whilst celebrating female strength and empowerment. This has been achieved through refined technical experimentation, with a range of explorative techniques, technologies, materials, and fibres - incorporating Augmented Reality into a bespoke fashion outcome’. A combination of dyeing processes has achieved depth and enhanced the strong opulent colour tones.
Sachi hopes the collection inspires others to consider how technological developments could change the way we build and express identity using interaction to reconfigure our relationship with materials.
Carina Huang, BA (Hons) Jewellery and Objects
Project Title: Earned Stripes
Deeply connected and inspired by the nature of the human body. Carina’s project focuses on organic shapes, textures, and the human skin.
Earned Stripes was inspired by the stretch marks on her skin. Their shape and likeness were achieved using traditional metal materials, and sunlight was introduced as an unconventional tool to create tan marks that mimic natural body lines. The premise behind the work is to turn something that is often seen as an imperfection into an embellishment intended for adoration, and for individuals to celebrate the beauty of their bodies.