Falmouth Uni Creative Collaboration
Calendar collaboration champions emerging creative talent in Cornwall
Artwork by Cornwall students decorate the desks of professionals across the UK in publishing, manufacturing, and the creative industries following our collaboration with BA Illustration students at Falmouth University.
To address misconceptions surrounding the paper and print industry, we gave students a brief around the theme of sustainability. As printing is one of the few truly sustainable industries, we wanted students to capture the connotations of sustainability for nature, people, society, community and economy.
Designer Becky Dibb has been with SAPC for over 10 years and welcomes the glimpse of artistic talent in it’s infancy, before students have experienced the demands of a professional working environment.
What’s so interesting about commissioning the work is that every piece is so different: the techniques, the individual styles, and the interpretation of the brief. Seeing the artwork created by these young artists, who are given a brief and asked to make alterations just as they would in a professional situation.
Becky and marketing manager Cat Wilkins judged over thirty entries at Falmouth, selecting the successful thirteen illustrations and providing face to face feedback to each student individually.
Becky says the collaboration is a learning experience for the company as well as the students.
We don’t just accept their work and say ‘that’s lovely, thank you’, we go back to them, and they have to work at it. The students have to understand that their pictures must reflect what SAPC wants. It’s a genuinely, useful creative experience for us as well, for example experimenting with specialist stock, using papers we’ve not used for our own work before.
We chose the bulky, textured Cairn stock from Paper Back to give our calendar a sustainable, organic look and feel. However the environmental force of our paper choice doesn’t end there.
There’s a sustainability message in our choice of paper too.
Each Cairn stock is an FSC® certified product made from recycled fibres manufactured by a process entirely free of chlorine (which is normally used to brighten the paper). The white and cream papers are made from 100% collected waste paper and the grey papers are made mostly from recycled till receipts.
Keryn Bibby, final year co-ordinator on the illustration course at Falmouth says:
The collaboration gives our final year students the opportunity to work in a professional capacity, gain industry feedback and national exposure. A valued experience and innovative concept, which has proved to be a great success.
SAPCs 2017 calendar features the work of: Gennifer Wagayen, Abigail Hudspith, Rebecca Snook, Mai Dudley, Abi Maynard, Jamie Edle, Joe Depass, Catherine Turner, Ella Kasperowicz, Jessica Vaughan, Emma Rayner, Bethany Lorna, Anastasia Wigg.
Our brief to Falmouth University students:
- Create an illustration around the theme of sustainability
- Make your illustration topical for a month reflected in your use of colour, imagery or tone.
- Choose a paper stock to work with and think about how you can use the paper’s colour, texture, look and feel to emphasise the messages and tone of your illustration.