Inspired Festival is an annual celebration of the fresh talent coming out of our Arts, Design and Media faculty. Student creatives showcase their innovative, cutting-edge projects, demonstrating outstanding ingenuity whilst using a range of disciplines.
As excitement builds around the showcasing of this year’s projects, we’re taking a look back at some of the unique projects from last year’s festival.
Yaling Weng – Diploma in Jewellery and Related Products
Project title: Hi Pets
My project, entitled ‘Hi Pets’, is a pet memorial series. The core idea is to use pet hair to design different parts of jewellery to form a series of memorials and express the meaning of commemoration. Memorial jewellery can be traced back to ancient Rome, and in the history of human development, jewellery has evolved from simple accessories to objects with a certain symbolic significance. Since the mid-17th century, hair commemorative jewellery has been popular. People use hair as the raw material for making jewellery and make mourning jewellery to convey their affection.
Memorial jewellery is not limited to expressing grief. It is also a beautiful expression of people’s love. Because hair is not perishable and can be stored for a long time, it symbolizes the love that transcends death and lasts forever in the token of love. Memorial jewellery contains richer and more delicate emotions than traditional jewellery. This emotional product resonates with the imagination of the audience through the ability to attract the senses, evoke memories and emotional associations. It satisfies needs for personalised jewellery to a certain extent, and at the same time makes the emotions in jewellery resonate with their own unique stories.
Feroza Qassam – BA (Hons) Illustration
Project title: Her Illustrative Mind
‘Her Illustrative Mind’ is my brand name and my social media platform where I showcase my talent and create a voice for the ethnic minority. I love a challenge, especially when it’s to do with creating awareness for third world countries.
Towards the last year of my Illustration degree I leaned more towards designing characters and overall children’s books, which I never thought I’d step into before taking on my university course. Having the opportunity to illustrate characters, I’m able to draw characters of colour which we don’t see often. As a Muslim, I don’t see enough characters in books that are Muslim or wear an Islamic attire. I want to break this ongoing monotonous cycle of separation and illustrate a book that includes characters of all shapes, colours and faiths.
Jennifer Lin – MA Landscape Architecture
Project title: The Front Room Market
‘The Front Room Market’ is part of a food-centred neighbourhood that brings people together through food and social experiences, strengthening food security, community resilience and environmental sustainability.
As a landscape architect, I am passionate about people-centred design to enhance health, social and experiential values of everyday life, and create places that are planet-friendly and climate-resilient.
My design thesis focuses on rethinking marketplaces as a public space. The project explores the roles and forms of modern marketplaces, connecting people with food and the community, and re-establishing Birmingham’s historic status as a flourishing market city.
The design concept takes inspiration from the room in a household where people feel invited to come together to gather, relax, socialize, to share food and share experiences – the front room.
Check out the projects being featured at this year’s festival, or better yet, come along and see the work for yourself!
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