A group of Communication Design students from Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen are organising a brand new communication design festival, which will pull together work from local artists and designers in the two-day event.
The ‘No Ball Games’ festival – which takes inspiration for its name from the signs prohibiting ball games in green spaces, which Aberdeen City Council decided to scrap last year – will take place in Hatch in the Academy on December 9 and 10.
As well as an exhibition featuring work from students at Gray’s, the festival, which is open to the public, will include presentations by some of Scotland’s leading design communicators, including James Gilchrist, organiser of the Glasgow Design Festival, Lateral North, a research and design collective, and Mark Kemp from Aberdeen-based FortyTwo Studio.
‘No Ball Games’ is the brainchild of fourth year students Magdalena Puchalska and Sian Blackburn and exchange students Sebastian Schnellboegl and Franziska Geesmann, who were influenced by a similar event they attended in Germany.
“No Ball Games design festival is a student-led initiative aimed at bringing attention towards the young design scene within Aberdeen,” the team said.
“We hope to showcase communication design students’ work to help raise awareness of the possibilities offered by contemporary applied art and design in both a commercial and cultural context.
“In the long run, we hope the event will contribute toward Aberdeen’s design economy development, by supporting the city’s creative community, and creating favourable circumstances for the designers to connect with local businesses.”
Communication design course director Cameron Craddock, added: “Our students are regularly involved in a wide range of external facing activities and this latest initiative demonstrates that there is a growing demand for this type of festival within the local creative economy”.
Local businesses, Contour Café and Six Degrees North, have already signed on as partners for the event as well as support from RGU Union.