Once the competition is up and running, you will find all the Dream Lab team results here.
Team from Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology scoops top prize in British Council’s Dream Lab competition
On the 14 November, a venue at Sanlitun village in Beijing was transformed into a contemporary gallery space for an exciting weekend of Chinese and UK innovation.
Teams from across China came to present their creative work at the final stage of an 8 week competition developed by the British Council’s Education UK team in the UK and China, and five leading museums and universities from the UK : Bournemouth and Kingston Universities, the Science Museum, The Design Museum and The Wellcome Trust.
The Dream Lab challenge invited 20 teams from across China to take on a professional brief to develop and express scientific ideas in a creative and inventive way. In the first stage of the challenge teams used the online learning platform to develop their initial ideas with a UK based team of professionals and research students.
Only 5 of the original 20 teams progressed to the second stage after their work was assessed by expert practitioners from the world of design, curation and science. All 5 teams then travelled to Beijing to the final where their work was judged by a team of practitioners from the UK and China, including expert curators, scientists, graphic designers and art critics. Michael Johnson – of the Johnson Banks agency – and one of the UK’s leading graphic designers, joined the panel as a judge, as did Carole Yinghua Lu, a leading independent art critic in China.
As a multidisciplinary challenge the teams that took part were also diverse, including both science and arts based students from across China. The five teams that made it to the final were from : Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology; the China Academy of Art; Hunan University; Southeast University and Xiamen University.
Apart from the hard work demonstrated by the teams , the presentations were varied in nature from a science-based fashion show by the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology 's ‘321’ team, to cutting edge animation from Hunan's ‘Six Dimensions’ team.
The judges found it very difficult to decide on a on a clear winner as all the teams presented very individual and inspiring work. However after much deliberation the judges chose Beijing's own ‘3.2.1’ as winners on the basis that they had fulfilled the criteria of the task in the most comprehensive way and their work was considered to be of the highest professional quality.
The winning team of Dream Lab, ‘3.2.1’ of Beijing's Institute of Fashion and Technology, will travel to the UK in April 2010 for an educational and cultural week of visits. The trip of life time will be a truly inspiring educational and cultural experience, including opportunities interact with all the institutions involved, including creative workshops, seeing British design in action at the universities and museums, and seeing behind the scenes at the Science and Design Museums in London.
XIONG Yu, member of Dream Journey from Xiamen University mentioned that taking part in “.. the competition is the most rewarding experience in my college life. The six members of our team are very diverse and I believe by working together we brought out the potential and best in everybody!"
Professor Catherine McDermott, Director Postgraduate Design from Kingston University London highly commented on the teams' performance. She said: "The teams who have participated in the challenge have shown outstanding levels of hard work and have produced a fantastic catalogues of highly professional and creative work. The high quality of the work made picking the final teams all the more difficult for our panel of experts in the UK "
Andrew King, Assistant Director Education UK, British Council, and UK project manager of Dream Lab said: “The incredible value of a challenge like this is to demonstrate that the UK and its education can truly inspire people to fulfil their own potential. Dream Lab develops teamwork, independent thinking, language, communications and research skills – in fact the very abilities that multi-national employers are seeking in internationally-educated graduates. Delivering education using on-line platforms – just like the one used for Dream Lab, and enabling access to top-notch practitioners shows the real value of a UK educational experience.”
Jazreel Goh, Director Education Marketing, British Council China said :"I am very happy with the performance of the teams and we received some really interesting pieces of work. I hope many of them have enjoyed the process as much as I have. Apart from winning great prizes, benefits from taking part in the competition are numerous. During the process, students will have gained greater confidence and independence, a hallmark of the UK student experience, as well as gaining valuable experience and skills from creative thinking to project management."
Tinting Xu, a local Chinese curator said: "I went to see the Dream Lab final in Sanlitun today; the atmosphere was very good, and I loved all the teams and their work! I feel proud to be a Kingston University graduate! "
Zhang Tianyi from the winning team at Beijing’s Institute of Fashion Technology, said, “We all feel very warm inside even though it is quite cold in Beijing! It is a great encouragement for us because our work is recognised by the top arts and science experts. They mentored us patiently and professionally during the past 2 months’ preparation period. We learnt a lot which we could not learn from the classroom. The other great learning point is that we realised the importance of team work. I believe the experience will greatly benefit my future life and study.”
Donna Loveday, Head of Curatorial from London Design Museum said, “I was stunned by the high quality of the works presented by the students. As a curator, I would exhibit their work in my museum. I think the Dream Lab competition organised by the British Council is a very creative project which brings a special learning experience combining both arts and science knowledge to the Chinese students. I hope this experience will inspire their creativity.”
The Prime Minister’s Initiative for International Education
Dream Lab is one of a number of campaigns that have been developed in support of the UK’s Prime Minister’s Initiative for International Education (PMI 2), a five year strategy to support the UK’s position in the international education market.
For further information about Dream Lab, visit www.educationuk.org/china-dreamlab or in Chinese:
www.educationuk.cn/tiyan/dreamlab
For further information about Dream Lab, please contact Andrew King, Assistant Director Education UK Marketing (Brand and Communications) at the British Council on +44 (0)161 9577071 or mailto:andrew.king@britishcouncilorg
Firstly, congratulations to all the teams who participated in Dream Lab, the teams who have participated in the challenge have shown outstanding levels of hard work and have produced a fantastic catalogues of highly professional and creative work.
The high quality of the work made picking the final teams all the more difficult for our panel of experts in the UK! Unfortunately only five teams can join the final in live final in Beijing, which will take place on 14 November.
The teams are:
Over the past two months 20 teams from across China have been working on a professional creative brief to deliver scientific research and ideas in a creative, exciting and enticing way.
Using a unique online learning platform the teams have been working closely with experts from a host of leading artistic, creative and scientific institutions to help them develop their programmes.
The live final will take place in The Orange located in the centre of town at The Village in Sanlitun. At the final the five teams will face their biggest challenge to date – presenting and expressing their ideas to our panel of specialists in front of a live audience.
The teams will be competing for the exciting trip of a lifetime to some of the epicentres of UK design, science and research, as well as scholarship opportunities studying in the UK.
Find out what the teams think during their work on the challenge:
After the guidance from the experts and development team today, our team had a small gathering in the woods (our 3rd base, the moonlight pouring, a relaxing and quiet environment). After one night discussion, we made further adjustments to the already set script, we made improvements to content and performance. Ah... today was very productive, but we will continue to perfect our presentation……
Up to now we have had a lot of help from many different people. Thanks all of you who have helped us! We will try our best complete and make it perfect as we can.
What we should do now is be ourselves and dedicate ourselves to taking part in this competition do everything and never give up.
Our team are on the right track, our members and our teachers are enjoying getting together and using our time together. We hope to develop new and fresh ideas for the challenge and have some good memories of the challenge.
Disccusion with “ two teachers”
Yesterday afternoon, we had our first online meeting with Rebecca from Kingston, at the beginning we felt a little apprehensive that it would be a very official meeting focussed on the competition however as the meeting progressed we felt more comfortable.
Yesterday evening, we met with a psychology professor in a rice noodle restaurant near Wudaokou. He is psychology specialist and gave us much advice from a scientific view point, he also recommended some films and books related to sleep and dreams. It was a pleasant evening we all sat together, eating and chatting, the time flew and before we knew it, it was 10pm.
The new summary, a new beginning
Slowly, our team has become a part of the library, because we have too many memories here. We don’t know how many meetings we’ve had here, we put together recent information and put forward our points of view. It’s autumn and it’s getting cooler, we are happy together having discussions, eating and dreaming! We visit each other in our dreams.
In four years, we’ve had very few experiences of such smooth cooperation.
It’s surely so effective because we have had so many meetings
Every life and every object actually have their own dreams; they all have the right enjoy them in their own dreams worlds. Many things are viewed as “dead things” or inanimate objects, actually, when you change this way of thinking, change your perspective, you will then find they also have very rich “lives”. People are often self-focussed and ignore the existence of the other things around them. When you learn to be concerned with the surrounding world, learn to think about other things rather than yourself, you can then walk into the dreams of other lives, blend dreams with other dreams and have a unique experience of some unexpected dreams.
The United Kingdom’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities.
