By Gyles Lingwood (Director of Education – College of Arts) – Staff Profile
2017 saw the inaugural College of Arts’ Lincoln Festival of Creativity bring together students and staff from all six of the schools of the College of Arts with the Lincolnshire public, local businesses and the whole University community to explore and celebrate different aspects of ‘creativity’. The Festival was designed to show-case the impressive work produced by students to a wider audience and to provide students with exciting experiences of the creative industries through engagement with industry experts.
Summed up through the strapline ‘Engage, Explore, Imagine’ the 4-week Festival presented the eighteen College end-of-year degree shows under a single collaborative ‘umbrella brand’ and hosted eight ‘signature events’ where high profile individuals from outside the university (including Sir John Hegarty – BBH ad agency, Tom Roope – Google, Prof Richard Coyne – University of Edinburgh) presented talks, workshops and debates to encourage cross-discipline collaboration and further enhance our understanding of what it means to be creative and it’s value.
Working with Graphic Design students the team commissioned Born Agency and created a family of festival logos, posters (print and digital), a brochure, website and social media feeds. Publicity and PR for the Festival included articles in local and national publications, local radio interviews and digital posters across Lincoln on the Visit Lincoln totems.
The Festival’s eight ‘signature events’ attracted more than 350 attendees and the Festival twitter account (@FestCreativity) and Instagram account (@festivalofcreativity) continue to grow with currently over 400 combined followers. The highly visual website (http://www.lincolnfestivalofcreativity.com/) and innovative brochure for the Festival were very highly regarded and are currently being used for recruitment and marketing events for the College of Arts.
James Foster from the University’s Digital Education and Student Life team photographed and filmed many of the 2017 Festival of Creativity events to capture their content, variety and vibrancy. Pulling all this footage together, Level 3 Media Production student Callum Mitchell (with additional support from Josh Brown) has created the following fantastic case-study film that really captures the energy and dynamism of the 4-week festival.
The Festival welcomed lots of new visitors onto campus and significantly raised the profile of the work of the College of Arts’ students. A number of collaborative projects have already been set-up as a result of the 2017 Festival and the excitement and anticipation about the 2018 Festival of Creativity, that will run from 21st May – 1st June 2018, is already building.