Top designers set to curate Noise festival

Leading names in the design industry including Tom Dixon, Zaha Hadid and graphic designer James Sommerville are backing the second biennial virtual Noise Festival 2008.

They will act as curators for the festival’s website applications and offer a selected group of young people the chance to work in their studios.

The charity encourages underprivileged young people with no connections to the creative industries, to demonstrate their artistic strengths by putting work on its website. The aim, according to Noise executive producer Denise Proctor, is to get the best of the next generation of talent into the media.

Five winners in each of 12 categories, including illustration, graphics, magazines, moving images, new media, product, photographs, art, architecture, fashion, word and music, will have their work promoted by the charity.

The festival is offering applicants the chance to win a dream job in the creative industries including design.

‘In 2006 we offered 35 jobs and we hope to have more this year,’ says Proctor. She adds that Zaha Hadid Architects and Tom Dixon Studio in London, and Attik in Leeds, will be taking placements from the Web entrants.

In the future, the charity intends ‘to set up a bursary that will be able to help young people financially as they strive to fulfil their creative potential’, she says.

This year the website is being updated to act as a social networking site, where under-25s who register can choose to collaborate with other artists signed to the site.

The festival is being promoted through interviews with its curators, school and sixth-form tours, leaflet distribution and on BBC-backed buses.

Also confirmed as curator is Norman Rosenthal, who was responsible for the Sensation exhibition at London’s Royal Academy in 1997. Noise is also awaiting confirmation from Gorillaz illustrator Jamie Hewlett, says Proctor.

Entries to the festival should be submitted before 31 May. For more information, see www.noisefestival.com.