NEWS RELEASE: GSA illustration student snapped up by leading international publisher. news announced at Graduate Degree Show 2018 opening

August 31, 2018
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A page from Helen Kellock’s first illustrated children’s book, The Star in the Forest, 
which will be published by Thames and Hudson next year
  • Helen
    Kellock’s first illustrated children’s book, The Star in the Forest, will
    be published by Thames and Hudson next year.
  • Helen
    is one of 400 students who unveiled projects at 2018 Graduate Degree Show.
  •  Innovations
    from Design School, School of Simulation and Visualisation (SimVis), Mackintosh
    School of Architecture and Innovation School in the Garment Factory include:
o   using a recently released medication for MS, Alemtuzumab, as
the focus for her work and working with people who are living with MS, Amal Amzan
(SimVis) has
developed an App to help people to cut through the medical jargon and make informed
decisions around the benefits and side effects of medication;
o   In the centenary year of the great Spanish
‘flu epidemic – the first UK fatalities of which were here in Glasgow – Akshaya
Kannan (Design Innovation), has addressed a major issue: how could Glasgow cope
with a new pandemic?
o   harnessing the potential of 3D
printing (Bruce) James May (Product Design Engineering) has developed an innovative
approach to replacing and complementing common elements found in LEGO and K’Nex educational kits.
o    Chahat Abrol (Design Innovation) proposes using haptic
technologies to help enrich the experience of museums
  •  100
    Fine Art, Creative Practices and Curatorial Practice students along with SimVis
    Sound for the Moving Image students are showing work in the Tontine Building
  • Graduate
    Degree runs 1- 9 September Entry free.

A Glasgow School of Art Master of Graphics, Illustration
and Photography student has been snapped up by one the world’s leading
publishers it was revealed today, 31 August 2018, at the opening of 2018 Graduate
Degree Show. Glasgow-based designer, Helen
Kellock, will see her first illustrated children’s book, The Star in the
Forest, published by Thames and Hudson next year. Helen has already won the
Batsford Prize for Children’s Illustration and was highly commended for the
Macmillan Book Prize. She also made the semi-finals of the international Adobe
Design Achievement Awards.
The Star in the Forest tells the story of
Maisie and Pip who decide to set out into the night to find a shooting star
which they saw fall out of the sky and crash into the nearby forest. Driven by
their curiosity, the girls navigate their way through the eerie forest towards
the star and in doing so discover creatures and overcome their fears along
their way.
“I drew my first scribble for The Star in the Forest one night when I couldn’t sleep,”
says Helen. “I looked out of my window at
the stars and, as I I live beside a country park, I
imagined walking through the trees with a torch. Suddenly I began drawing two
little sisters and started to plot what they might be looking for and who they
might meet along their journey.”
Editorial Director Roger
Thorp and Commissioning & Development Editor Anna Ridley from Thames
and Hudson said: ‘Helen came over from
Glasgow to a portfolio review of new illustrators’ work that Vivian French
kindly arranged when we came to Edinburgh to visit the Picture Hooks exhibition
Vivian had organised at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art. When we first saw
Helen’s original artwork we knew we were looking at someone with remarkable talent.
Helen’s illustrations for The Star
in the Forest are so rich in
atmosphere, they transport you to some other place entirely. As an art
publisher, we are always on the lookout
for illustrators like Helen who can present the world to us afresh and reveal
something we hadn’t seen before. Combined with her charming story about the
friendship between two siblings, Helen stood out as a young artist with incredible
potential.’
Graduate Degree Show, which is the annual
showcase of work by students graduating from GSA taught postgraduate
programmes, has been able to go ahead as planned this year despite the fire in
the Mackintosh Building. Students from the School of Design, Innovation School,
Mackintosh School of Architecture and School of Simulation and Visualisation
would normally have shown their work in the Reid Building. With support of
Castleforge Partners their exhibition will be staged in the Garment Factory
“The
Glasgow School of Art has one of the largest communities of postgraduate
students following creative programmes in the UK,” says
Professor Tom Inns, Director of The Glasgow School of Art. “Graduate Degree Show is an important opportunity for them to share
their work with a wider audience and to show how creativity and innovation can address many of the challenges
facing society today.”
 “The
fire in the Mackintosh Building has had an impact on all our postgraduate
students, but particularly those who are usually based in the Bourdon and Reid
Buildings,” he adds. “With these buildings still remaining inside the fire
security cordon it is unfortunately not possible to hold the show for
Architecture, Design, Innovation and SimVis students on Garnethill, so we are
very grateful to Castleforge Partners for helping us to stage their exhibition
in the Garment Factory bringing the whole of Graduate Degree Show to the
Merchant City.”

“We would also like to thank Baillie Gifford who have generously supported
an annual Art and Design Bursary for our students
since 2014 and this year have extended their support to the GSA by becoming headline sponsors of Graduate
Degree Show,” adds Professor Inns.
Rachael Pittaway from
Castleforge Partners, The Garment Factory landlord, said: “We are very excited and honoured to support the Architecture,
Design, Simulation + Visualisation and Innovation students from the GSA by
hosting this year’s graduate degree show at the Garment Factory.
“We have recently restored the building’s original industrial aesthetic
and emphasised its factory origins by making features of the cast iron columns
and leaving services exposed to allow the original fabric of the building to
shine; this has resulted in an expansive open plan and interesting space that
will be perfect for a creative exhibition like this.”
Nicholas Thomas, Partner,
Baillie Gifford said: ‘We are very pleased to help support the GSA through
the challenges it is facing. We congratulate all the varied contributors to the
Graduate Degree Show, and wish all the best to the GSA, its staff and students
for next year.’
Graduate Degree Show runs in the Garment
Factory, 10 Montrose Street, G1 1RE and
the Tontine Building, 20 Trongate, G1 5ES
from 1 – 9 September. Open 10am – 8pm Monday to Friday and 10am – 5pm
Saturday/Sunday. Entry free.
For
further information, images and interviews contact:
Lesley
Booth
07799414474
press@gsa.ac.uk
@GSofAMedia



School of Design

                       

Images: Interior Design student, Sabrina Ferreira Zauli’s, Nightclubs: Between Boundaries and Freedom; (Bruce)
Product Design Engineering student James May – STEM STEAM; work from Fashion and
Textiles Design student, Noor-e-sehar Sajjad’s, raheseroon collection.

The School of Design
exhibits include work by students specialising in Graphics, Illustration and Photography,
(including Helen Kellock), in Fashion and Textile Design, Interior Design and
Product Design Engineering.
Innovations from
Product Design Engineering, a programme jointly delivered by the GSA and
Glasgow University, this year include (Bruce)
James May’s STEM STEAM, a project
which harnesses the potential of 3D printing for Educational Construction kits.
“Construction toys such as LEGO and K’Nex
are used in schools as a way to teach children about STEM subjects in an
engaging and hands-on way,” says James. “By
using a system that children are familiar with they can more easily grasp
difficult topics such as maths, physics, mechanics while also having fun.
Despite this, there are several logistical problems with construction
toys being used in schools such if elements get lost during lessons, it can be
costly to replace them either by purchasing individual elements from the supplier
or buying additional kits. Also, if a school invests in one brand, there is a
lack of incentive to buy other brands as there is a lack of compatibility. This
can reduce and constrict the creative freedom of children in class.”
James interviewed
teachers and students as well as observing pupils using both the LEGO and K’Nex 
kits to establish where the challenges were. He went on to develop a
library of components which includes both the pre-designed elements as well as
base connectors which can be used by both teachers and pupils to design their
own elements. The library features both common elements found in LEGO and K’Nex
Education kits as well as a variety of elements which enhance and expand the
functionality of these kits. A bed of components can be printed in 4 hours
which would allow for a full lesson’s worth of parts to be made within a week –
which is still faster and far cheaper than ordering through distributers.
In order to assess the
success of the product testing was conducted with users aged 8 – 10 in a play
session.  “From the testing, it was found that the users fully engaged with the
task once they grasped the potential of combining the different systems
together,” says James. “By creating
different parts of the model out of different systems they managed to create
things which would not have been possible previously.” James is now looking
to refine the design, test a wider range of 3D printers and investigating packaging
the software for retail and distribution. 

Other innovations from
Product Design Engineers on show include work by Vânia Reis Santos, who has looked at recycling of medical products
in the NHS. The work focused specifically on the redesign of walker boots for
fracture patients that are currently disposed of and not recycled. Meanwhile, Lingjiang Jia has investigated the
design of a health station for rural communities in China.
Among the designs
unveiled by Interior Design students are Sabrina
Ferreira Zauli’s Nightclubs: Between
Boundaries and Freedom.  Sabrina has
looked at nightclubs as symbols of a freedom and investigated how the
experience of the nightclub continues beyond the boundaries of the space.
Meanwhile, Chinese student Xiaoying Hua
has created a response to the devastating 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China.
Fashion and Textile
Design Master’s students who are unable to show full collections at this point as
much of their work is still inaccessible in the Reid Building, have offered a
taste of the textiles they were developing and the looks their were creating
for their collections. The annual Fashion Promenades at which the designers
unveil their full collections will now be staged later in the year.



Innovation School
 

Images: Akshaya Kannan’s
Pandemic Resilience, Glasgow and Chahat Abrol’s reimagination of the museum experience
This is the first
Graduate Degree Show for students in the Innovation School and with work by
students based both in Glasgow and at the GSA’s Highlands and Islands campus in
Alytre on show.
Whether it occurs by a quirk of
nature or at the hand of a terrorist, epidemiologists say a fast-moving
airborne pathogen could kill more than 30 million people in less than a year.
And they say there is a reasonable probability the world will experience such
an outbreak in the next 10-15 years
In the centenary year
of the great Spanish ‘flu epidemic – the first UK fatalities of which were here
in Glasgow – Akshaya Kannan, has
addressed a major issue facing the world: how to cope with a pandemic.
Akshaya’s interest in
how to cope with major events is rooted in personal experience. Her home city
of Chennai has experienced cyclones, floods and tsumani in recent years, and
the neighbouring state of Kerela of has recently suffered some of the worst
floods on record.
“Although our healthcare system has come a long way, so has
international travel, making the spread of disease as simple as getting on a
plane to another city somewhere in the world in a few hours,” says Akshaya.
“The WHO and the UK have in place
Pandemic Preparedness Plans, but it is crucial that cities themselves are well
prepared in order to be able to support its citizens during such an event. This
would allow ease of recovery afterwards.”
“Emergency Response plans, Business Continuity plans, Mass Fatality
Plans exist, but are cities prepared for losing people responsible for its
execution? How does the city and its critical services survive? What have we
learnt from previous experiences? What changes have happened since, that we can
use to support ourselves better?”
Akshaya sees the fast
developing world of technology from smart phones to drones and autonomous
vehicles as being the key to the last mile logistics to ensure that support,
food and aid reach people without human interaction so as to minimise spreading
infection. The development of a common platform for sharing, which helps but
doesn’t over help, is also crucial: one that allows a need to be shared and
help not only offered, but also noted as having been offered so that hundreds
of people don’t respond to the same request.
“The threat of deadly pandemics is right up
there with nuclear war and
climate change. It is widely understood that innovation, cooperation, and
careful planning can dramatically mitigate the risks presented by each of these
threats,” says Akshaya “When the next pandemic strikes, it could be
another catastrophe in the annals of the human race. Or it could be something
else altogether. An extraordinary triumph of human will. A moment when we prove
yet again that, together, we are capable of taking on the world’s biggest
challenges to create a safer, healthier, more stable world.”
Akshaya worked with the
resilience team at Glasgow City Council, NHS
Scotland, ScoRDS and East Lothian Council.
Other Innovation School
students based in Glasgow explored The Future of Local Democracy in Scotland,
The Ontology of Geopolitical Borders. Weather as a Social Media —
encouraging remote connectivity between people and places, and The Future of Europe.
Among the students based in
Altyre Chahat Abrol re-imagines the
role that museums can have in community engagement through the use of haptic
technologies. She explored the nature of a visitor’s museum experience and
engagement, tying the haptic understanding of artefacts to social understanding
through an interactive and touch-sensitive display unit and audio device,
blending of the digital and the physical.  Arjav
Parikh explored the collaborative connections between a local Steiner
school (Drumduan Academy) and the community of Forres. Meanwhile, Gul Rasool posed the question “How might we enable more people to recover
from alcohol dependence?”. Through a participatory design process
working in collaboration with Quarriers 
the project challenged the stigma that falls around people who
are in recovery from alcohol dependency.



Simulation and Visualisation


           
Screens
from Amal Azman’s App. Visit https://vimeo.com/286361605
to see an introductory film.
Medical
Visualisation & Human Anatomy student, Amal Azman from Malaysia, has created an App to help people understand
the often complex information around medication so as to be able to fully
consider the benefits and the possible side effects before making an informed
decision on whether to take the treatment.
“I have always been interested in information delivery and how to make
it better,” says Amal. “Since
a young age I have been a very visual person. I found the education material
provided in school very dry, and would use illustrations and colours to improve
my studies.”
“More recently I have been looking into patient-doctor communication as
I often find that the people around me are dissatisfied with their medical
consultations. Upon looking into it I realised that it is quite a big issue.
Doctors do not have enough time with their patients, leaving
information-seeking up to patients. This is why good quality resources
need to be available, as this affects health in the long run.
When patients do not understand and are not well informed on their
medical conditions, the quality of disease management decreases and so
do medication adherence rates. Patient education is very important in
improving the outcome of these issues, but the current resources are often not
as well-designed as they should be.  Current patient education material is often
disorganized, repetitive has too much information and has language that is full
of complex medical jargon and often leave patients overwhelmed.”
Amal used a recently released
medication for MS, Alemtuzumab, as the focus for her work. Alemtuzumab has a
very high impact on MS. However, it also has a very high risk of potentially
dangerous side effects, so clear patient information is vital to help decision-making.
Amal worked initially with
six people living with MS on a co-design project to understand their experience
of patient information. The main message that came out of this project was
“just tell us what we need to know.”
Amal’s answer is a mobile
app that uses plain language, and is straightforward and accessible.
Illustrations and animations complement text to help users absorb information
and visualize it better. Bright colours and visual content help the user to
cope with information which is often not pleasant to take in. In an augmented
reality scene Alemtuzumab is explained in a very simple way.
The App was tested by nine people living with MS and
an MS specialist nurse. and it had an overwhelming positive response. Amal
hopes that it will be possible to do further research with a
larger group of people living with MS, and also develop it for for people with
different conditions.
Other students of Medical Visualisation & Human Anatomy, a programme which is
co-delivered with the University of Glasgow, have created Augmented
Reality applications for educating children about viruses (Rachael Suett and Austra
Cukura) and created an online 3D library and a set of 3D prints of drugs
and receptors for the British Pharmacological Society (Alakina Mann).
Innovations from students
on the Serious Games & VR programme include a Virtual Reality
environment for teaching basic physics/mechanics (Fraser Dougan) and a ‘Semantic Tapestry’ which allows different
users to create digital stories and explore them on in simple 3D environments (David McCulloch). Tom Brown, meanwhile has worked on a VR project for exposure
therapy for busy environments which is aligned to a project being undertaken by
Friendly Access, the GSA and Crad3D (further information – gsapress.blogspot.com/2017/06/gsa-to-partner-friendly-access-and.html)
Heritage Visualisation students
have created augmented reality and multimedia narratives for the Weigh House in Talinn
(Teele Jurivete) and created a
computer game based on National Trust for Scotland’s Kellie Castle (Claire Eaglesham).
Sound for the Moving Image work,
includes Jane Deasy’s engaging ‘sound bath’
installation, Laura Campbell’s
immersive diorama based sound installation and Jayant Manchanda’s educational package for music teachers to learn
about music technology.



Mackintosh School of Architecture

Among the work undertaken by
students on the MArch programme is RECONNECTING THE CITY Glasgow
Centre West, a project by Meng Wang which addresses the issue of the
disconnection of Glasgow.  Based on a series of researches
on Glasgow, the design proposes several further strategies for solving the
issues on the disconnection of the city and the incompletion of tourism routes.

 School
of Fine Art
66 MLitt in Fine Art Practice students across
six pathways (Painting,
Drawing, sculpture, Photography and the Moving Image, Printmaking and Performance)
unveiled their exhibits across two floor of the Tontine Building. These
include Niamh Moloney – Tenderlands 
The view from 53.3498°N, 6.2603°W, Baile Átha Cliath (Dublin, Ireland)
on 25th May 2018, Stephen Burke
– Subway Series, and installations by Gemma Travers and Gabriele
Stuckemeier. Also on show in the Tontine Building is work by 10 students following
the MRes in Creative Practices including Ashanti Harris’s Re-imagining Les Ballets Negres and Mariah Pearl’s As Told by Tulips.
Students on the MLitt in Curatorial Practice,
a degree jointly delivered by the GSA and Glasgow University, also introduced
the off site projects which they had been delivering as part of their programme.        



          

Images: Alice
de Bourg (Curatorial Practice) Earth Work
; Niamh Moloney  (Fine Art Practice)-
Tenderlands  The view from 53.3498°N, 6.2603°W,
Baile Átha Cliath (Dublin, Ireland) on 25th May 2018 ; Mariah Pearl (Creative
Practices) As Told by Tulips;
installation of work by Gabriele Stuckemeier (Fine Art Practice); Ashanti
Harris (Creative Practices) Re-imagining
Les Ballets Negres; detail of installation by Gemma Travers (Fine Art
Practice); Stephen Burke (Fine Art Practice) Subway Series
Quote from Cold Town Beer
Cold Town Beer is delighted to be supporting the
Graduate Degree Show at The Glasgow School of Art for the first time, this
year. As an up-and-coming, Scottish brewery, we are honoured to be supporting
up-and-coming, talented graduates from the GSA, a leading creative school for
the arts. We wish for a successful event and a prosperous future for all GSA
graduates.

Ashley
Davies, Business Development Manager, Cold Town
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