Brighton Marina offers design prize for students
Students are being offered a chance to see their work on display at Brighton Marina – and win a prize in a new design competition.
The Marina has joined forces with Brighton University for a contest to come up with a design that will adorn benches throughout the area.
The challenge for students at the university’s School of Art and Media is to design a vinyl wrap which represents what the city of Brighton and Hove means to them.
The winner will have their design replicated, printed and installed on benches which are all around the Marina – some of the in highly “Instagram-able” locations.
The winner will also receive a £100 voucher which can be redeemed at any Marina venue.
All the entries will be showcased on the Marina’s digital channels and three finalists will be chosen from a panel of judges including the university’s vice-chancellor Debra Humphris.
She will be joined in the judging by Eloise Parrack, senior lecturer in graphic design, Freeland’s fellow Michael Clarence, independent brand consultant Bill Wallsgrove and a representative from Brighton Marina.
The competition is open for entries and closes on Thursday 6 April to be followed by a public online vote on the shortlisted designs from Thursday 13 April to Monday 17 April.
The winning design, which will be revealed on Thursday 4 May, will be seen by the millions of visitors that Brighton Marina receives each year.
The costs for the production and installation of the winning bench design will be funded by Brighton Marina.
The university counts the likes of the late author and illustrator Raymond Briggs among its former staff while Sir Quentin Blake was a fellow.
Former students include Alison Lapper and Emily Gravett as well three Turner Prize winners – Keith Tyson, Rachel Whiteread and Helen Cammock.
The dean of the School of Art and Media, Tamar Jeffers McDonald, said: “I am delighted that Brighton Marina has come to us, looking for entries from the school.
“The competition provides such a great opportunity for our artists to use their creative imaginations in interpreting the brief, with a real chance to improve the local environment.”
Professor Jeffers McDonald added: “The students study everything from illustration, animation, photography, film, fashion, textiles and 3D.
“Our school has produced some extremely talented artists over the years, with three Turner Prize winners as well as recent runners up in Channel 4’s Handmade: Britain’s Best Woodworker and a BBC 2’s show All That Glitters.
“We are looking forward to seeing what the students can produce for this unique local competition.”
Brighton Marina marketing manager Sophie Chandler said: “We are looking to uncover the city’s future generation of artists emerging from the University of Brighton.
“We enjoy collaborating with local educational establishments, which we do on a yearly basis, and as a local business we feel we are best positioned to show our support and have that positive community involvement.
“We are looking forward to being able to give the students a platform to showcase their talent which ultimately will be seen by every visitor to our marina and hopefully provide opportunities for them in their chosen career.”
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Why a closed arrangement and not open to all? Especially Brighton Council tax payers?
“Vinyl” – has everyone taken leave of their senses?
Vinyl is an abbreviation for polyvinylchloride, also called PVC, one of the nastiest plastics ever invented!
Making it involves the use of toxic chemicals which, over the decades, have caused cancer in production workers!
And when burnt, accidentally or as waste (or by cable thieves to recover the copper wire) Dioxin is produced, which itself is very harmful to human health (and probably to animals as well?).
And with some of the benches in question probably being in the open-air there’s also the risk of pieces of the plastic film breaking off, or being peeled off, to then be blown into the water, to create even more pollution in an already over-polluted sea!
With the University of Brighton being a quasi Public Body, partially funded by all of us taxpayers, the environmental irresponsibility apparent from this competition looks to be inexcusable, surely?
In addition to discussing with the commercial entity which is Brighton Marina an alternative competition based on durable, non-polluting, works of art, it looks ad though Brighton University urgently needs to appoint a Sustainability Co-ordinator?
Which also begs the question of why does the uni’s School of Art seem to have ignored the excellent example of the full-size ‘House from
Waste’ which got built at the back of the Grand Parade campus several years ago?
And ultimately; are there even any students willing to have their names associated for evermore (in this digital age) with this eco-unfriendly vinyl -based project?
And to any music-lovers wondering about their beloved viny LPs. Yes, that’s the self-same plastic, with major health risks for those making the plastic sheet from which the records are pressed. So best to dispose of broken or unwanted records as chemical waste, and certainly don’t burn them!
Taxpayers also need to be aware of the appalling conduct of our City Council, since 1997, in continuing to place uPVC windows in homes and schools. And to have continued doing so after the solemn declaration, by former Labour Leader Cllr Ken Bodfish in Hove Town Hall’s Council Chamber, that henceforth no more City schools will have new uPVC windows installed!
But to a large extent that decree has been ignored – so every school-day our increasingly eco-aware children look up from their desks to see the world through uPVC windows – selected by grown-ups who easily could, and should, have known better! Especially as the main architectural choice for new-build premises for many years has been ‘Powder-coated Aluminium’ window-frames (including a thermal-break, of course).
For almost every eco-problem there are already adequate solutions – our decision-makers just need to make a bit of extra effort (but not a lot, Google Search now gives ready access to an astonishing amount of information!), as was/is needed for this Brighton Marina competition, surely?
I didn’t like the word ‘vinyl’ for sure but had never heard of such wrap in the context of what you might call street furniture, so did a web-trawl. Horrible stuff, chemically speaking, and you would think both the Marina management and the Uni would have more commonsense – obviously not. And, apart from that, which is bad enough, this sounds like another excuse for some incredibly tacky and garish ‘artwork’ to be plastered everywhere. If the council has any say in this ridiculous plan (such as, is some sort of permission rtequired to do this?) then I suggest they intervene PDQ. Urgent rethink required on the part of the Marina and the Uni.
I feel like the people commenting here about the environmental risks of PVC should be required to defend the local weedkiller ban with the same gusto.
Some Guy, you sound a bit coercive and off topic.