Students to bring FRESH ideas to the Spin Awards 2018

A team of BA Graphic Design students from Manchester School of Art have been nominated for the Young Talent category in the Spins Awards 2018, for their creation of FRESH: a magazine and initiative to establish a community of Black and Minority Ethnic artists and showcase their talent.

Students Katie Jones, Haseena Ali, Paulina Zawadzka and Lauren Goldsby will be travelling to Amsterdam, where they will receive professional coaching to help them fine tune their ideas, before pitching it to a jury of industry experts, who will decide this year’s prize winners.

The FRESH team follow in the footsteps of previous nominees from Manchester School of Art, who have achieved success over the past two years at the Spin Awards.

In 2017, Masters of Architecture (MArch) students Esther Frimpong and Zena Moore won the Silver Award for their space booking and sharing economy app PIC, or Platform for Interactive (EX)change. Likewise, in 2016, Graphic Design students Adam Tranter and Andrew Page claimed the Spin Awards Grand Gold Prize for their app WHack that blurred the real and digital world, by allowing users to virtually impose their artwork onto their surroundings.

The team’s nomination also follows their success of launching the first edition of the magazine on 8 March.

‘It’s an honour to have been shortlisted for the Spin Awards and it’s going to be such a great opportunity to bring FRESH to a new audience’, commented Katie Jones a member of the FRESH team.

‘We’re hoping that this opportunity will allow us to raise awareness of the lack of diversity within the arts. This platform will also enable us to help give a voice to those BAME artists that we showcase in FRESH.’

Katie also noted the input that the wider School and University communities have had on the project.

‘FRESH’ has had the full support of our lecturers at university,’ she said, ‘as well as our peers across a wide range of disciplines in the arts.

FRESH has also been heavily supported by the Students’ Union, who have provided guidance and support on how we can get our movement seen by a wider audience both in and outside the University.

The Spin Awards 2018 is going to be a stepping stone for FRESH. With the competition focusing primarily on digital innovation, it provides us with the perfect opportunity to push the boundaries of what a magazine actually is. We’re currently working on moving away from a printed publication and exploring ways we can use the technical advances of our generation to create something new and inspiring. It’s such as huge opportunity for us at FRESH and we’re unbelievably excited to see where this journey might take us.’

You can find out more about FRESH by following them on social media.