GREENGRADS - MEET 50+ DESIGN GRADUATES IN LONDON - DRIVING SUSTAINABILITY IN DESIGN
The Green Grads Textile Challenge presents striking Eco Stories told in pattern on cloth.
Sponsored by Epson, new graduates were invited to submit a portfolio with patterns that reflect their environmental concerns, taking into account eco-friendly cloths and methods of printing.
Three winners and four runners-up celebrate nature and sustainability in stunning portfolios.
TEXINTEL are proud to support GREENGRADS as Textile Champions to support the next generation and the future of sustainable manufacturing…we look forward to welcoming you.
GREEN GRADS is thrilled to announce that Jay Blades MBE will present our Awards on September 25th at 3pm at the Samsung Experience Space, Coal Drops Yard, N1C. Please see full announcement below
Jay will present The Show Impact Award, for the person or project making the strongest impression at the show; The Change Maker Award for the person/project most likely to make an environmental difference in the future ; and The Earth Award, for the person/project that most loves the planet. He will also introduce the winners of ECO STORIES (the GREEN GRADS Textile Challenge, sponsored by Epson) and the Innovation Awards, presented by Design-Nation.
GREEN GRADS - MEET 50+ DESIGN GRADUATES IN LONDON
GREEN GRADS OPENING HOURS
@greengrads22
Saturday September 24, 11am-7pm
Sunday September 25 11am-5pm
Samsung Experience Space, Coal Drops Yard, King’s Cross, N1C; free to enter; no booking needed
Come and see bacterial dyeing, mycelium vases, and other new materials/processes galore - or just grab a seaweed biscuit and learn some simple mending techniques Green Grads @greengrads22 is back, and again a part of the sustainability-based Planted* design show, on the weekend of September 24/25. The venue is the glamorous Thomas Heatherwick-designed Samsung Experience Space @samsungUK in Coal Drops Yard, in the heart of King’s Cross, London N1C.
Green Grads is an ongoing initiative to platform recent UK graduates – and happily they are legion - who are meeting head-on the world’s most pressing eco-issues such as sustainability, climate crisis, circular production, waste and pollution, depletion of resources, bio-diversity and much more. Green Grads is also highlighting a return to nature and craft, and the power/desirability of local materials and strengthened communities.
This is the second edition of Green Grads at Planted at Samsung which last year attracted around 2,000 visitors over a single weekend. Green Grads 22 will introduce around 50 new graduates from Universities and Colleges all over the UK.
They have been carefully chosen by founder/curator Barbara Chandler @sunnygran, who’s explored degree shows from Falmouth to Manchester, then criss-crossed London, and practically pitched tent at the two editions of the New Designers shows this summer.
Graduates are drawn from a huge range of disciplines. You’ll find product/furniture design, engineering, new materials and processes, fine art, animation, textile design and innovation, ceramics, illustration and graphics, and more. Graduates come mainly from the talent pool of 2022, but are also include some graduates from 2021 and 2020.
Packed into the airy Samsung Space, and migrating onto its abundant screens, will be an intriguing array of special features. In the centre, is a large and futuristic machine literally growing pattern on cloth, using little water and no harmful chemicals. It is harnessing bacteria, which Central Saint Martins’ graduate Charlotte Werth’s @charlottewerth_Moving Pigment used to create lines and gradients of colour. “It’s a collaborative process with living organisms,” she says. She believes her methods could replace the petrochemical dyes that pollute water and landscape, and destroy ecosystems.
Surely a material of the moment is fast-growing mycelium, part of the fungi kingdom, a ubiquitous underground network of threads from which mushrooms grow. It’s already producing materials for packaging, clothing, food and even construction. And at Green Grads is a strangely-beautiful cluster of mycelium vessels by Georgie Gerrard (@gk.g_design) graduating this year from Loughborough University. She has grown mycelium in plaster moulds left covered in clingfilm in a greenhouse for at least seven to ten days. Then she’s removed the results, baked them, let them air dry some more to cure and change colours. Each resulting organic shape is genuinely unique and strangely beautiful.
“I have a whole new take on upcycling,” says Christoph Kurzmann, recently graduated from Rycotewood Furniture Centre. He has a sleek modern design for a stool and storage tower to be made in quantity from bedroom furniture salvaged from the renovation of three halls of residence at his Oxford Brookes University. His stools will be dotted around the Green Grads show, they are precision-made from curved laminated wood bed frames with eight traditional timber joints and a hand-sanded silky smooth finish. Yours for £100 or £250 for three.
The Seaweed Grotto explores an abundant resource from Britain’s coast. Ideas includes an attractive and flexible sheet material invented by Libby Challoner @L.C.Products of Falmouth University, which she’s even printed with photographs. It could also be used for medical test kits to cut the use of disposable plastic.
Seaweed food is the passion of Eva Katrenakova @evakatrenakova. She’s been researching nine types in particular from the hundreds available, all rich in nutrients and easily gathered. She’ll be wearing her novel beach foraging bag, made from marine waste including nets, ropes and a tarpaulin. She’ll even bring a tin of seaweed biscuits.
Resin harvested from pine, fir and cedar trees used to be a crucial way to waterproof ships, used extensively in the 19th and 20th centuries. However it was pushed aside by oil-based alternatives. In the Woodland feature, Jacob Marks @jmakesuk is reviving this traditional craft. "Resin is renewable, carbon-negative, and biodegradable," he says, "and could be an ideal material in an oil-free future." He’s showing how resin can make almost any material water-tight, including paper, card and mesh. He’s also made handles, platters and bowls.
Sam Foxton's @sam.foxton tables use huge chunks of "green" timber complete with bark for the base of small tables with tops of natural timber, using traditional joints that allow the wood to move. Callum Pincombe’s @callumpincombe revealing table has a top made of slices of timber from a single log
In the Clay Café, potters are expressing a low-carbon love of their locality.
Bruno Schooling @bruno_schooling from Manchester School of Art, has already won a prestigious award from the Conran Shop. His “site-specific” project Ground is tableware made from the iron-rich earth of Keepers Cottage Organics, a farm in the Peak District National Park, and includes crushed bone from the animals.
An innovative scheme by developer Gabriel Lau of Golden Earth @goldenearthstudio in Wimbledon has been dishing out construction clay to London artist/crafts people for many months. It’s been used by Isi Rodriguez @isirodriguezceramics, graduating from the RCA this year, for his arresting vessels, which also contain discarded London bricks. “Crossing London three times, dragging a shopping cart with 80kg of wet clay was just the beginning of an exciting adventure.” Victoria Coxall (@slow.ceramic) is also using clay from Golden Earth, adding detritus from the River Thames. “My ‘slow ceramics’ bring a sense of belonging and of community, and create an emotional relationship between ourselves and the environment.”
The Innovation Tables have ideas from science and engineering for alternative energy, ways to reduce packaging and eliminate plastics, and green roofs
Some Green Grads are going global and have tackled problems abroad with impressive expertise. For example, RCA/Imperial graduate Luisa Charles @luisajcharles will show Float, a DIY surface water drone to measure water quality, co-designed with Colombo City’s wetland communities.
The Green Grads Textile Challenge presents striking Eco Stories told in pattern on cloth.
Sponsored by Epson, new graduates were invited to submit a portfolio with patterns that reflect their environmental concerns, taking into account eco-friendly cloths and methods of printing.
Three winners and four runners-up celebrate nature and sustainability in stunning portfolios. Sarah Thorley wins the Gold Award for The Bateman Collection inspired by Biddulph Grange Gardens, a landscaped Victorian Garden near Stoke-on-Trent. It had been ravaged by vandalism and fire until restored by the National Trust, a living testimony to the power restoration and repair. And it is a glorious celebration of nature, including florals, foliage, birds and more, along with history, culture and architecture. Sarah says: “I’ve painted with watercolours and drawn with fine liners on recycled papers for artwork, then printed onto linen and re-upholstered vintage chairs from charity shop. My collection highlights nature and the fantastic conservation work of the National Trust.”
Eco Stories also champions three graduates from 2021 and 2020.
Reflecting his love of nature, and using sustainable local production, Daniel Embleton @daniel.k.embleton is offering colour-saturated prints of his detailed flower drawings. Naomi Seaward @naomi.elizabeth.design is similarly inspired. Her sustainably-produced plywood cut-outs of blooms and leaves can replace cut-flowers; naomielizabethdesign.com. With arresting graphics, Elena Branch @elenadrewthis fights shrinking ice caps and the climate crisis with art prints and fabric designs.
In the Wool Hub, designers Niamh Wright @nowtextiles and Grace Arrowsmith @gracearrowsmith_design, both from farming families, fight to save the fleece that farmers are reduced to burning.
Future Fashion is attacking fast waste. Are you wearing oil? Adele Jordan @adelecjordan melted synthetic garments and got a material that geologists now call plastiglomerate – a ghastly black lump. By contrast is flax is beautifully thriving in glass bowls – an alternative sustainable crop.
And visitors can join informal workshops in a drop-in salon for Mend & Make, hosted by Green Grad Jade Durling @jadesews and Jessica Amaral (“loving pre-loved sportswear”) @itsgarma.
Artists taking part will drive home the environmental messages that underpin this dynamic event. They include Jemima Sara, @jemimasara with a “protest washbasin” shouting about waste water, part of her Don’t Flush It Down “angry” bathroom suite, shown at the Crossover Project @crossoverprojectofficial earlier this year. Weining Cai @weiningcai with a specially-commissioned collage, and eco-activist Roberta Schreyer @robertaschreyer with her evocative textile Dreamstones and tree-themed woven hangings.
All this is against a continuous backdrop of videos on the giant Samsung screen, made by the graduates to illuminate their projects. And Animation graduates will also show their emotive stories.
Thus Green Grads is a potent pathway for innovation, linking UK’s top graduate talent with industry professionals that include design agencies, manufacturers, retailers, and galleries.
We sincerely thank our industry sponsors who are coming together magnificently to finance student bursaries for travel and accommodation, exhibition costs, our Awards, our media party, our website and much much more.
GREEN GRADS is not-for-profit, and all sponsors will receive an account of monies spent.
Headline sponsor:
Design Centre Chelsea Harbour @designcentrech
Amara @amaraliving
Anglepoise @anglepoise
Benchmark @madebybenchmark
Epson @epsonUK
Ercol @ercol_uk
FESPA @fespagram
Heal’s @heals_furniture
Imageco @imagecoprint
Little Red Rooster: PR partner @littleredroosterhq
LSA International @lsainternational
Neptune @neptunehomeofficial
Nick Munro @nickmunrodesigner
PriestmanGoode @priestmangoode
SCP @scpltd
Samsung Experience Space @samsungUK are providing a beautiful exhibition hall and top tech facilities, and we are delighted to once again be part of Planted @planted_community
Saturday September 24, 3pm
Designers Den Event
Saturday September 24, 3pm
Five Green Grads pitch their ideas to five industry professionals, the infamous KOMODOS (Komodos are an endangered species of DRAGON lizard…)
KING KOMODO this year is Nick Munro
Visiting Professor of Design, Royal Academy of Engineering, Imperial College London (sponsor)
Then we have
Adam Wade, technical director Anglepoise (sponsor)
Andrew Tanner, design manager, Sainsburys Habitat Argos
Hannah Thistlewaite, Heal's senior buyer and sustainability lead (sponsor)
Sebastian Cox, founder/director Sebastian Cox Furniture
The media moderator for this stand-out event for the second year running is design editor Bethan Ryder Executive Editorial Director @wgsn
Presentation of Awards
Sunday September 25, 3pm
Jay Blades presents Awards designed and made by the University of Plymouth.
GREEN GRADS founder and curator, Barbara Chandler, first met Jay nearly ten years ago when visiting the Out of the Dark charity he co-founded and ran to teach restoration skills to youngsters in High Wycombe. Now a much-loved face on television, Jay is known as host of the globally-transmitted BBC programme The Repair Shop, where restoration experts and craftsmen revive family heirlooms and cherished antiques. Jay also has his own TV production company, and runs a furniture restoration business. He has recently been appointed Co-Chair of Heritage Crafts.
Appropriately for GREEN GRADS, this spring Jay was appointed the first Chancellor of Bucks New University, from whom he holds a degree in criminology and philosophy. Here he is working with the University to develop new furniture-related courses and facilities.
“Jay is aligned so perfectly with the values of GREEN GRADS,” says Barbara Chandler. “Essentially, he promotes craft, repair and restoration, education and sustainability. As do we. At GREEN GRADS 22, we have created a platform for 50 new graduates from colleges all over the UK to show their innovatory ideas to heal the planet. We have design, materials, engineering, art, animation, and textiles. And lots and lots of craft from our remarkably hands-on cohort of 2022. We are promoting repair through our MEND & MAKE hub, with drop-in workshops. We have a willow-weaver, recently graduated from Hereford College of Art, demonstrating throughout the show. We will so love hosting Jay and sharing our joint values, and we thank him for making time on a Sunday in what I know is his particularly hectic autumn schedule.”
CURATOR’S QUOTE
“Our show is an inarguable double whammy: we deliver support for new designers and support for the environment at one and the same time…through engaging content created/exhibited by the cream of recent graduates from British universities,” says Barbara Chandler, founder/curator of Green Grads
She adds: “We are not saying that all the projects and ideas we show will be commercially viable, or indeed possible right now in the ‘real world’ but they are seeds to nurture and grow, the results of in depth research and dedicated hours in studios and workshops. Their inventors are the talent we so sorely need to help solve our eco-crises.”
“Furthermore, sustainability is now a commercial imperative,” adds Barbara Chandler. “Consumers/clients, when deciding what to buy, are demanding sustainability, and they want info/action.”
* Planted runs Friday 23 - Sunday 25 September with a nature-inspired “off-grid cabin” and an engrossing talks programme in Granary Square, King’s Cross, N1C.
