Students from Middlesex University’s Arts and Creative Industries courses have celebrated a year of impressive accolades and milestones in 2024, showcasing exceptional talent and innovation across multiple creative disciplines.
The year ended with the university’s Christmas Flash Fashion Show, where 50 designs from Fashion BA students were on display from a white shirt project to menswear tailoring and third-year work-in-progress collections. The event, which drew an audience of 250 people to the Hendon campus, featured designs supported by students from various courses, including Fashion Marketing, Film, Photography, and Illustration.
Flash Fashion Show
Lisa Wilkinson, Senior Lecturer in Fashion Design, said: “This was a fantastic opportunity for students to experiment and build confidence to curate and execute a fashion show. They developed valuable transferable skills and had an opportunity to work with students from different disciplines.”
Flash Fashion Show3
Throughout the year, numerous exhibitions highlighted the outstanding work of Middlesex students. The North London Degree Show 2024 kicked off with an exciting fashion show and featured an array of final-year projects in fields such as fine art, film, animation, graphic design, 3D games, photography, and interior design.
Middlesex students and graduates also earned national and international recognition. BA Film graduate Nefeli Dimakea won the prestigious Global Peace Award at the Hague International Film Festival for her film All Rise, which explores themes of justice and loss, while three Film and TV graduates received accolades at the Royal Television Society London Student Television Awards for their outstanding work.
BA Animation graduate Agata Tabacu secured a spot at the sought-after Black Sea Animation Workshop, with her film As I Look Out The Window being one of only 10 selected for screening. Middlesex also made waves at the Animest International Animation Festival in Romania, where a retrospective of 16 standout student films was shown to an audience of filmmakers and industry professionals.
Photography students also earned accolades, with the work of MA students Beatrice Balzano and Maryam Javadian chosen to appear in the prestigious Source Magazine Graduate Photography.
Camilla Brown, Programme Leader MA Photography, said: “Our Masters course focuses on contemporary social documentary photography; we support our students to realise their full potential, and we’re very proud of these two students’ achievements.”
Two students on the MA Interiors course enjoyed success in the Architects for Health Student Awards 2024: Ng Qassandra won the MA Interior Design category while Ariana Daniela Chavez Zavala was highly commended.
Michael Westthorp, Programme Leader MA Interiors, said: “This is an outstanding achievement. These awards are a forum of architects, designers, planners and professionals who share and recognise best practice within the healthcare sector.”
BA Fine Art graduate Holly Sezer and MA Fine Art graduate Luke Rooney were featured in Bloomberg New Contemporaries at Camden Art Centre, an exhibition of the work of 55 of the most exciting artists emerging from UK art schools selected by internationally-renowned artists.
Holly Sezer New Contemporaries 2023
The work of Middlesex students appeared in a variety of other exhibitions during the year, including Exhibition Flux – Fashion Communication at The Crypt Gallery in London where Fashion Communication and Styling graduates presented their creative work in an exciting display. A display of recent graduate work from Middlesex’s creative courses also won ‘Best Stand’ at the renowned D&AD New Blood Awards 2024, beating exhibits from up to 40 other universities.
As well as awards and exhibitions, a number of students from arts and creative courses were involved in community campaigns; the Kilburn Museum Lab exhibition involved students working with the community in examining Kilburn’s past, while the Hear My Voice campaign with London Borough of Barnet has seen students work with schools and community groups to tackle violence against women and girls.
Students on the University’s Interiors courses also achieved recognition at the Interior Educators Awards 2024 where there were two winning projects as well as a commendation for Kilburn Museum Lab. Interior Architecture student Abeen Sami won in the Social Justice category while students from Interior Architecture, Interior Design, Dance, Music and Film won the Collaboration Award for their Objects of Rhythm project to build objects for dance students to work into live performances.
