Education UK teams in the UK and China, in partnership with the Science Museum, The Wellcome Trust, The Design Museum, Kingston University and Bournemouth University, launched a new interdisciplinary competition for Chinese universities in September 2009. Based on the theme of sleeping and dreaming, the competition asked students from a range of disciplines to work together to fulfil a professional creative brief. Their task was to engage people with complex science through innovative design and creative communications.

In the first stage of the challenge, twenty teams of students from leading Chinese institutions used an on-line learning platform to develop their initial ideas with a UK-based team of professionals and research students. Five teams progressed to the second stage after their work was assessed by expert practitioners from the world of design, curation and science.

The final took place in November 2009 at Sanlitun village in Beijing, a venue transformed into a contemporary gallery space for an exciting weekend of Chinese and UK innovation. At the final in Beijing, all five teams were judged by practitioners from the UK and China, including expert curators, scientists, graphic designers and art critics. Michael Johnson of the Johnson Banks agency, 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, and Neil Webb, British Council China's Director of Arts.

Zhang Tianyi, from the winning team, said: 'We learnt a lot which we could not learn from the classroom and realised the importance of team work. I believe the experience will greatly benefit my future life and study.'

Presentations were varied in nature, from a science-based fashion show by the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology's '3.2.1' team, to cutting-edge animation from Hunan's 'Six Dimensions' team. The judges chose '3.2.1' as the winner 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. They will travel to the UK in April 2010 for an educational and cultural week of visits. The trip will be a truly inspiring educational and cultural experience, including opportunities to interact with each of the institutions involved, take part in creative workshops, see British design in action at universities and museums, and see behind the scenes at the Science and Design Museums in London.

'We chose the science of sleep because it crosses all cultures – it's something that everyone experiences,' Professor Catherine McDermott of Kingston University's School of Communication Design and the lead academic on the project said. 'The teams showed outstanding levels of effort and produced fantastic catalogues of highly professional and creative work. The high quality made picking the final teams all the more difficult for our panel of experts in the UK.' The other four finalists were teams from the China Academy of Art; Hunan University; Southeast University and Xiamen University.

Dream Lab offered Chinese faculties of art and design the opportunity to showcase the best of their young creative talent and work with some of the UK's leading curators and creative practitioners while positioning UK education as a potential academic partner and provider of innovative learning. Dream Lab is cultural relations in action, using education as the vehicle to inspire shared learning and interdisciplinary thinking. By taking part, Chinese students were able to develop employable skills of teamwork, creative thinking and problem-solving, as well as confidence in using English, and so the messaging to support the marketing and communications objectives of PMI2 was clear throughout.

Andrew King, UK project manager of Dream Lab, said that the challenge clearly demonstrated 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,' he added.

For more information, visit the Dream Lab website.