Noise Festival

The ‘Noise Festival’ is the UK’s first virtual arts festival for young talent - 25 and under - and it went live in October 2006!
Urbis, Manchester is, until 19th November the official exhibition space for the highlights of the website www.noisefestival.com.

The website provides a showcase platform of acclaimed artwork created entirely by young people and displayed the very best of 4,000 online submissions.

Noise Festival is directly aimed at young creative people wanting to get into the creative industries and who dream of seeing their work on television, radio, online and in print. It presented the opportunity to have their work reviewed by some of the UK’s most renowned creatives and potential collaborators. The best fashion, photography, illustration, design, music, fine art and new media is being showcased online and appears across a series of physical exhibitions throughout the UK.
Some of the biggest names in the creative industry have selected their favourite artworks to show as part of the multimedia festival. The curators chose artists because they ‘consistently demonstrated their originality, passion and innovation to their chosen art form’.
Lauren Clowes was chosen by the curator Mark Eley. After performing fashion shows from an early age, Lauren realised that she could pursue a career in the field she loved the most. After completing an art foundation course at Stockport College, Lauren went on to a three year fashion degree at Manchester Metropolitan University. During this time, she was able to create many collections for the degree course and for her own personal portfolio. During her time at University Lauren worked at the Palace Theatre where the basis for a few collections was inspired due to the theatrical influences from the stage shows. Lauren also takes themes from working in charity shops and customising clothes and accessories to sell on Portobello Market in London where she currently has a stall. Lauren channelled her interest in retro clothing with the aid of vintage shops and found objects in garments where ‘craft’ is greatly implicated.
Lauren first discovered her passion for fashion through art classes where she discovered she was much more ‘touchy-feely’ with fabrics and especially enjoyed sewing, more so than painting etc. Lauren innovatively experimented with these two mediums by sticking fabric onto flat drawings! At college Laurens teacher was able to help and guide her through her Art foundation. The North West has been a vibrant centre for the development of Lauren’s development of creative talent and has a reputation for continually producing some of the best creative talent in the UK. Urbis, Manchester is also all about covering what’s new, original and interesting about city life. Lauren was very pleasantly surprised to find out that she had been handpicked for the exhibition. Lauren was able to use much of her University work in preparing for the opening. The piece ‘garden party’ was actually done 2 years ago which further shows Lauren’s innovative skills in predicting fashions. This particular collection is based on ‘found’ objects (such as blankets) and is inspired by sunny days and garden parties. The outfits are actually comprised of picnic blankets to enable the characters to sit down wherever they may be. ‘There’s a commitment to nostalgia that really works’, says Eley, ‘it’s a real pleasure to find because it has such a huge personality’. Lauren loved ‘making an image that encourages you to be somewhere else, away from all the hustle and bustle of everyday life’. Lauren is modestly shy when she sees her work being admired by numerous people. Old photographs from her grandma and mum have provided inspiration for Lauren to produce a number of her creative designs. Lauren adores vintage clothing and charity shops.
The ‘noise festival’ is the biggest event that Lauren has been involved in, although she has had experience in exhibiting her work though fashion shows on a catwalk at University. Lauren’s dream job would of course be in designing individual, flamboyant creations which are ‘more art than fashion’. Lauren currently works in ‘Rags to Bitches’ in Manchester where she is soon to have her very own clothing line before she moves to London to continue working in the industry.

Author: Cherry Sandhu

Manchester iJourno group