Interiors and textiles MA students win Liberty challenge

A historic design institution with strong links to the textile industry. This sounds like a description of Manchester School of Art but could apply just as neatly to the design house Liberty. Given this overlap, it seemed especially fitting when Liberty set our MA Interiors and MA Textiles students a challenge at the beginning of this year. 

In their ‘Embrace the Selvedge’ brief, Manchester School of Art students were asked to take inspiration from the archive collection of Liberty fabrics and wallpapers to create new approaches to how we live nowadays. Fashion Art Direction lecturer Liz Silvester set up this challenge using contacts formed when she previously worked as Head of Creative at Liberty.

Genevieve Bennett, Head of Design for Interiors at Liberty, said that they have always been keen on working with the most creative, forward-thinking institutions around the world, and Manchester School of Art stood out in part thanks to its multidisciplinary focus. “We love the fact that you have interior design and textiles as MAs, it was really lovely to be part of that dual pronged part of the project,” she said. 

In the challenge, the students might rethink small apartments or share housing or communal spaces but were encouraged to do so through a Liberty lens — that is, with a focus on arts and crafts, sustainability and cultural celebration. Designs should be rooted in the local area, with students having to choose one of two locations to base their approaches on.

The first was House of Social, a new city-centre student housing unit operated by luxury student accommodation brand Vita. The second was Stockport’s Market Place Studios — chosen in part for the way the mock-Tudor building resembles Liberty’s own department store in London. 

Over the course of the brief, students were invited to London, where they got a tour of Liberty’s head office and the shop — further tours were also organised at both House of Social and around Market Place Studios. 

After submitting their proposals in April, a selection of our students then went before a panel of judges made up of staff from Liberty and Vita with the successful students being rewarded with a behind the scenes day of shadowing at Liberty and Vita. 

Winning Pitches:

Reyaan Hameed (MA Interiors) – Liberty winner

Reyaan reenvisioned Market Place Studios as a multi-use community venue, split up into an art gallery, shops and a kids’ area with vinyl wallpaper which children can colour in and wipe clean. It also featured a fabrication lab (a working area for artisans) and coworking studio space. 

Amelia Tillott (MA Interiors) – Vita winner

Amelia reimagined Market Place Studios as a creative hub which could train young people in craft skills. 

Yi-Jou Hsu was also highly commended for her proposal of The Haven Project, a teahouse and travellers’ lodge in Stockport fostering kindness and intercultural dialogue.

Abantika Chanda (MA Textiles) – Liberty winner

Abantika’s project centres on conscious play, using visual language as a mood-enhancing tool creating small moments of levity. It also details her experience as an international student finding a sense of belonging in Manchester. She used flowers which are not indigenous to this city as a metaphor for multiculturalism. 

Claire Malley (MA Textiles) – Vita winner

Claire drew inspiration from playwright Shelagh Delaney and painter Annie Swynerton. 

Georgia Homoky was also highly commended in this category for her prints which married Liberty’s style with that of tattoo motifs, creating a snake version of a classic Liberty wallpaper design.

Students emphasised how much they’d learned during the challenge – everything from textile printing to working on a live design brief to developing their painting and print making skills. “Above all, this project has really boosted my confidence in my work and subsequently myself,” Georgina Homoky told us via email. Others seemed similarly delighted. As Claire Malley put it, “It was amazing to have my hard work and creativity recognised and appreciated, and I can’t wait for the next steps and to get involved with the design process at Vita.” 

For Liberty’s Chief People Officer, William Le Clerc, an advantage was posed by students having access to Liberty archival material through Manchester School of Art’s Special Collections: “Because you have some of the Liberty archive here at the university, the way people utilise the archive and interpreted those designs, I thought they almost intuitively understood the brief and our design heritage,” he said. 

Vita’s Group Head of Interiors Kayleigh Ann Millington stressed how impressed she was by the holistic approach students took, as well as the level of hard work. “You can tell that there’s been hours and hours and hours put into this.”

Find out more about our MA Textiles, MA Interiors and further postgraduate courses here.