Our Games in the Woods jam, which is part of this year's Urban Tree Festival, launches on 15th May, and will run for just over a week - finishing on 23rd May. As part of the jam's launch, we are running an online event to inspire participants and highlight free digital resources, which can be used to create a game, including visuals, audio, and online game making tools.

We love the idea of encouraging people who aren’t programmers and coders to participate in game jams, so we are also highlighting and giving a run through of some no-coding game making tools such as Bitsy.

Bitsy is a free tool created by Adam Le Doux which enables people to create games with an early 1980s retro aesthetic by drawing objects (static scenery tiles, character sprites or object items you can interact with) which are 8 by 8 pixels in size. These objects can be added to the play area, and the play area consists of at least one 128 by 128 pixel sized “room” (you can have hundreds of individual rooms all interconnected if you want). You can add dialogue and variables such as scores to the sprites and items, which will be triggered when you run the game and bump your player (avatar) character into them.

I love how easy it is to use Bitsy to create narrative visual games, and you can get something up and running easily without, as I’ve mentioned, having to do any coding. It has a small set of tools within it that allow you to create the graphics and pull the game together in one place.

Three Haiku created in Bitsy by GiuliaC

On a basic level, a Bitsy uses only three colours for each palette, meaning that you can only have three colours on screen at the same time, and only two frames of animation for your avatar, and each tile, sprite or item. However, it’s easy to go into the game data and increase the colours of each palette and add more frames to the animations. These are the sort of additional changes you can make in the game itself, but there are many other free tools created by the amazing Bitsy community which allow you to build on the basics of Bitsy and develop the features of your game if you want to. These “hacks” allow you to do things like add audio, import your own images you’ve created outside of Bitsy, merge Bitsy games, and even create HD Bitsys (16 by 16 pixel tiles, sprites, and items), and 3D Bitsys too.

To get an idea of what you can do with Bitsy, take a look at some of these free to play tree themed games others have created using the tool.

In the Pines, In the Pines, Where the Sun Never Shines is by Laura Hunt and Thomas Möhring, is inspired by US folk tales and murder ballads (there’s a content warning on the page).

Three Haiku is a visual haiku by Giulia Carla Rossi, who also built The British Library Simulator in Bitsy.

Faerie Mist was created by Freckled Femme and is a great atmospheric example of what you can make with Bitsy 3D.

I created Midwinter Sprits, which focuses on winter folklore in a woodland setting.

The Legend of Stoodley Pike Standing Stones is a collaborative piece created as part of the 2019 Feral Vector event in Hebden Bridge.

A drawing of Boycie the ghost poodle made by Stella Wisdom for The Legend of Stoodley Pike Standing Stones,  a collaborative Bitsy game created as part of Feral Vector in 2019

We’ve curated an itch.io collection of these tree themed Bitsys, along with other tree themed games created using other tools.

To highlight a few of them, Puzzle Tree by BoxORox and Beautiful Tree by the Crounchy Brothers are both puzzle games, but with very different gameplay and aesthetics. There’s also Claire Morwood’s Forest Walk, which is a lovely looking hand-drawn 3D diorama style narrative flat game. Claire has created a number of Bitsys and Bitsy tutorials, which are worth checking out.

Speaking of which, the Bitsy makers community has shared a number of help guides, tutorials and there’s also a Bitsy Discord channel to discuss all things Bitsy if you need help building your Bitsy game. Please do also join us online on 15th May at the Games in the Woods jam launch for more tree themed game-making inspiration.

 A collection of tree themed online games

This post is by Ash Green (@ggnewed) a creative librarian, who writes music, digital stories and makes games. 

If there’s one thing we love here at the Library, it’s trees. They help make books, they’ve kept many of us grounded over the last year of Covid-19 lockdowns, and each and every one of them holds a unique and special history. London itself is home to over 8 million trees, trees like these in our towns and cities are celebrated annually by the wonderful Urban Tree Festival.

This year, the festival runs from 15–23 May and will consist primarily of online events. As part of the Wikimedia residency at the Library, we will be running an online Urban Tree Wikithon to create, edit and improve articles about trees on Wikipedia.

Working together with library innovator, Marion Tessier, literary tree enthusiast, Dr Danielle Howarth, plus Dr Sara Thomas and Stuart Prior from Wikimedia UK, we are excited to be exploring trees from many angles: historical (like some of the oldest trees in the UK), geographical (such as the most northern tree in the world), political (did you know about Glasgow’s Suffragette oak?) and literary (who could forget good old Treebeard or the Faraway Tree?).

The Suffragette Oak, in Glasgow, Scotland by Sara Thomas, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

If you have a hankering for all things arboreal, come and join us - Wikipedia editing training will be freely provided at our online launch event on Saturday 15th May at 11:00 BST, plus there will be some drop-in online sessions through the week of the festival to support and nurture your article acorns.

No previous editing experience is needed, we will have a forest of useful resources, hints and tips to help guide you on your way. During the festival please use use #wiktreepedia on social media to share details of your work in progress, including links to tree related articles that you create or improve, or photographs of trees that you have added to Wikimedia Commons.

At the end of the festival, we will celebrate the fruits of our labours at a Show & Tell event on Sunday 23rd May at 11:00 BST.

This post is by Wikimedian in Residence Lucy Hinnie (@BL_Wikimedian) & Digital Curator Stella Wisdom (@miss_wisdom).

Congratulations to the winner, runners up and everyone who made a game last month for Leeds Libraries Games Jam on Novels That Shaped Our World, which invited jammers to create playful interactive adaptations of books in the BBC’s Novels that Shaped Our World list. To accompany this jam, they programmed a fantastic series of events, which if you missed seeing live, or want to re-watch, can be found in this YouTube playlist.

I absolutely love the premise of the winning submission Frankenstein's Double Wedding, Or, The Modern P…romeo…ethius by WretchedBees (Will Binns). You need a deck of cards to play this solo or cooperative game. Playing as Dr. Frankenstein, with the help of both your monster and betrothed, the game’s aim is to organise a double wedding, arranging catering, a florist, a venue and inviting wedding guests. Not forgetting, that you also need to create a spouse for your monster, before you can both get wed.

Frankenstein's Double Wedding, Or, The Modern P…romeo…ethius by WretchedBees

Well deserved recognition also goes to the two runners up, these are The Open Wizarding Challenge by Suzini56, where to win, players navigate rooms and corridors of their wizarding school, dodging moving staircases and obstacles, aiming to be the first to reach the exit with their bag of collected items, picked up on the way. Also, Fortune of War: A game of Napoleonic era Naval Life by webcowgirl, which is based on Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander books. Writing about her submission she says “this game tries to capture the flavor of the books, with its humor and humanity. Winning isn't just about money, it is ultimately also about pride, honor, and dignity.” Something we would all do well to remember.

Fortune of War: A game of Napoleonic era Naval Life by webcowgirl

Other #NTSOWgamesjam submissions re-worked Pride and Prejudice, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Herman Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener. You can check these out on the jam’s itch.io entries page. Being a Sandman graphic novels fan, I enjoyed looking at Of You by DarrenLEdwards, which has been structured so this tabletop roleplaying game could also be based on many other fantastical worlds such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Neverending Story, The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, The Chronicles of Narnia, His Dark Materials etc.

Well I have posted my game for #NTSOWGamesJam it hasn't been tested, I hope that it is at least vaguely playable https://t.co/LGSGtS6bXF

This is the first #TTRPG that I have actually "finished", so it is good to get something out there even if it needs playtesting

— Darren Edwards (@DarrenLEdwards) April 25, 2021

If exploring fantasy worlds and playing games has inspired you to want to make a game, or if you are a seasoned game maker, then you may want to take part in our Games In the Woods jam this month, which I am running with Ash Green, Marion Tessier from Story Circles and Kingston Upon Thames Libraries, and Cheryl Tipp. This is an online tree themed game jam for all ages, which will run throughout the duration of the Urban Tree Festival. There will be an online launch event on Saturday 15th May with inspiring examples of interactive digital experiences featuring trees and a virtual “show & tell” event on Sunday 23rd May for jammers to celebrate their creations.

Before and during the Urban Tree Festival, game jammers can meet and chat with organisers and each other on our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/qWXH8NcjHE, so please join and say hello on there and use #gamesinthewoods on social media to share images and details of your work in progress.

Games in the Woods game jam

You are welcome to join alone or in a team to create digital and analogue games, interactive fiction, web comics, board games, escape games, card games – anything you want! The only constraints are time, the theme and your imagination. We especially encourage creative re-use of images from the British Library’s Flickr collection of digitised 19th century books, do check out these online Flora and Fauna galleries. There is also a fantastic curated selection of wildlife and environmental sound recordings picked by my colleague Cheryl Tipp, which you can use in your creations. These are available via this SoundCloud playlist.

Sue Thomas, Irini Papadimitriou and Cheryl Tipp

Cheryl is also speaking at a free Digital Nature online event next Monday, 10th May, 19:30 - 20:30. Chaired by Irini Papadimitriou, Creative Director at Future Everything, this event also features Ben Eaton from Invisible Flock (read more about their woodland work Faint Signals here), and author of books on nature and technology Sue Thomas. This is part of the British Library’s springtime season of events The Natural Word, which explores nature writing and reflects on our need to reimagine our relationship with the environment. Hope to see you there.

This post is by Digital Curator Stella Wisdom (@miss_wisdom)

It’s hard to believe, but it’s almost a year since we took a look at some of the weird and wonderful epithets that have been used to distinguish individuals in the Library’s archives and manuscripts catalogue. Twelve months on, the Western Manuscripts cataloguing team is still working its way through the personal name records – correcting errors, enhancing records, and merging duplicate names.

In doing so, yet more items of epithetical interest have emerged. Who amongst us would not have their curiosity piqued by a man described as a pastry-maker and impersonator of King Ferdinand of Portugal? I’m sure we would all wish to take our hats off to the person labelled advocate for world peace (could there be a more noble calling?). We might be impressed at the range of skills held by the builder and composer and be in awe of the derring-do associated with the British flying ace.

But it’s in the area we today call nominative determinism that I’ve started to see some patterns. You know the kind of thing: the farmer whose surname is Farmer, the miller called Miller, and so on. Those are the obvious ones but with a bit of lateral thinking one can find some slightly less obvious examples in Explore Archives and Manuscripts. Nominative determinism once removed, if you like.

The world of religion is a rich seam. We have clergy of various types called Parsons, Bishop, Deacon, Vicars, and Dean, although I’m not sure being called Demons is the most appropriate name for the former owner of a collection of religious treatises.

Then there are the trades and professions. In the catalogue we have a master mason called Stone and a joiner called Turner. And if there’s one thing a bricklayer needs it’s physical strength so being called Backbone is a good start. A schoolmaster called Read makes sense, and when you think of the materials a jeweller works with then so does being called Dargent. A baker called Assh seems ironic (perhaps he was a graduate of the King Alfred School of Baking).

I don’t think there could be a more appropriate name for a soldier than Danger (although Bullitt comes close), and Haddock and Waters seem apt for seafarers too. Ditto, an explorer called Walker.

But of course there are always those who refuse to play along, those who didn’t get the memo. So we have the carpenter called Butcher, the butcher called Baker, the draper called Cooper, the groom called Chandler, the tailor called Fisher, and the mason called Mercer.

And finally, I am disappointed to report that the individual named Le Cat was not, in fact, a burglar.

British Library digitised image from page 47 of "The Wild Boys of London; or, the Children of Night. A story of the present day. With numerous illustrations" available on our Flickr collection

This guest blog post is by Michael St John-McAlister, Western Manuscripts Cataloguing Manager at the British Library.

We blogged recently about IFLA’s Wikidata and Wikibase Working Group's preparations for the next #1Lib1Ref campaign, which runs from 15th May to 5th June 2021. The Wikidata project page for this work is here, which includes resources, such as this Zine about Wikidata.

Barnstar for partcipation in the 1lib1ref 2021 campaign, created for Polish Wikipedia, featuring the Owl of Athena symbol. If you don't know what a barnstar is, there is an explanation here.

There is a recording of the Train-The-Trainers workshop run by Meg Wacha, which took place on Wednesday 21st April, now available to watch on YouTube and the slidedeck from this session is here. Meg's presentation gave a great overview on how librarians can run events in their libraries to contribute to Wikidata during the #1Lib1Ref campaign period. Useful urls mentioned in this session, include:

• Wikimedia movement affiliates (How to find your local Wikimedia chapter)
• Wikidata's Community portal
• Slides on how to set-up a dashboard for 1Lib1Ref on Wikidata
• Wikidata Professional Development Training Modules by Wiki Education
• Wikidata Tours (Shows how Wikidata works and teaches how to add data)
• The University of Edinburgh's Wikimedian in Residence webpages on Wikidata

As a follow on from the Train-The-Trainers workshop, the IFLA group are hosting a series of five upcoming Wikidata in #1Lib1Ref online office hours, these have been scheduled for different times in the day, to support participation from all parts of the world. These sessions aim to provide librarians with opportunities to discuss Wikidata work with international colleagues. See below for details of dates and times:

• Wednesday 5th May at 15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST/The Hague, 14:00 UTC
• Tuesday 11th May at 23:00 BST, 00:00 CEST /The Hague, 22:00 UTC 
• Wednesday 19th May at 15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST/ The Hague, 14:00 UTC 
• Wednesday 26th May at 07:00 BST, 08:00 CEST/The Hague, 06:00 UTC
• Tuesday 1st June at 23:00 BST, 00:00 CEST/The Hague, 22:00 UTC

To book to attend these #1Lib1Ref online office hours, please fill in this online form and you will be sent the Zoom link. If you have any questions about them, please contact Camille Francoise ([email protected]). 

We also want to give a shout out to the LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group, who hold bi-weekly Affinity Group Calls, Wikidata Working Hours, Wikibase and WBStack Working Hours throughout the year. Finally, being librarians, we recommend checking out this Bibliography of Wikidata, a continuously updated list of books, academic conference presentations, peer-reviewed papers and other types of academic writing, which focus on Wikidata as their subject.

This post is by Wikimedian in Residence Lucy Hinnie (@BL_Wikimedian) & Digital Curator Stella Wisdom (@miss_wisdom). They will both be at the #1Lib1Ref online office hour on Wednesday 5th May.

It is wonderful to be collaborating with Leeds Libraries on their online Games Jam this month, which is encouraging people to create playful interactive adaptations of books in the BBC’s Novels that Shaped Our World list.

Eye-catching artwork for the Games Jam created by Amy Evans (@tiger_tea) https://www.tiger-tea.co.uk/

In my experience game jams are a brilliant way of bringing historic and literary digital library and archive collections to life in a completely new way. I’ve ran a few at the British Library and I’m always keen to share what I’ve learned with other libraries, including contributing to Living Knowledge Network skills sharing events, such as one we held on the topic of games and playfulness in libraries, in November 2017 at Leeds Central Library, you can read more about this here.

@_jerryjenkins @ggnewed & @ella_snell doing a puzzle escape game in a box by @lizcable at a #LivingKnowledgeNetwork skills day (image © Stella Wisdom)

There are endless possibilities for adapting works of literature into games and interactive experiences. Earlier this year I attended an Oxford/London IF meetup group online event, where Emily Short gave a fascinating talk about the storylet game design process for creating Orwell’s Animal Farm an indie adventure game, which is based on George Orwell’s novel, where all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. There is a review of this game here.

Leeds Libraries have programmed a range of online events to inspire creativity, as part of their games jam. Last week I attended a thought provoking workshop led by Liz Cable on how to create literary escape rooms. It made me think of a very atmospheric Dracula inspired escape room called Carfax, situated in a sandstone cave system, which I had visited in Nottingham a few years ago. During the covid-19 pandemic Cave Escape have reworked this game into an online escape experience called Carfax - The Hunter, so anyone can play a version of this game from home.

Liz has a wealth of knowledge about all types of game making tools, apps and platforms, which she generously shares. I first met her at the MIX conference at Bath Spa University back in 2015, where she took me and a few other conference delegates to an escape room in Bath. This was the first time I had been to one; so it was Liz who opened my eyes to a new world of escape game experiences! 

There are still more excellent Leeds Libraries Games Jam online events coming up this week:

• On Wednesday 21^st April Rhian Isaac and Josh Flint from Leeds Libraries will discuss the real life histories behind some of the well-known books from the BBC Novels That Shaped Our World list, register here for the Behind the Books event.
• On Thursday 22^nd April Ann Jones from Cards or Die board gaming will be running a workshop on Rule Breakers - Creating a world with components. Ann has ran three previous workshops on 1. Adventure: Co-operative Games, 2. Life, Death and other worlds - solo games and voting, and 3. Crime and Conflict - programming, asymmetry and silence.
• On Friday 23^rd April there is a Game Creation event with Leeds Libraries and Leeds Museums.
• On Saturday 24^th April, I’ll be in conversation on a panel with Liz Cable and Ann Jones, which will be followed by an event where VR artist Rosie Summers will create an interpretation of Narnia using Tilt Brush.

1 WEEK! Till my live #VR performance with @leedslibraries ✨

Travel with me through the virtual wardrobe and into the fantastical Narnia! Join me live as I paint this magical Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe tribute, in VR. 💫❄️https://t.co/qaJUeI2xh6

See you there! #tiltbrush pic.twitter.com/ZcqROpQZqX

— Rosie Summers 🥽✨ (@VR_Rosie) April 17, 2021

All these events can be booked from Leeds Libraries Eventbrite page and if you want to watch recordings of previous events, check out their Novels That Shaped Our World YouTube playlist.

The Novels that Shaped Our World jam itself is taking place over Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th April. Thanks to Libraries Connected and Arts Council England there is a £150 prize for the winner and two £50 prizes for the runners up. More information can be found here.

If you are considering taking part, but are unsure where to start, then you may also be interested in reading this Writing Tools for Interactive Fiction blog post by my colleague Giulia Carla Rossi, which describes a number of free online tools that don’t require any previous programming knowledge. I also recommend joining the jam's Facebook group, where participants can talk to each other and ask questions. Good luck if you make and submit a game, I’m looking forward to reading and playing the entries.

This post is by Digital Curator Stella Wisdom (@miss_wisdom)

Since starting at the Library at the beginning of March, one of the highlights of my working week has been meeting with the IFLA Wikidata and Wikibase Working Group. IFLA is the International Federation of Library Associations, a global body representing the interests of libraries worldwide.

This working group ‘aims to coordinate actions, events and preparation of documents to leverage Wikidata and Wikibase in support of documenting collections and support capacity building in linked data, structured data, and cataloguing work’. For the last six weeks, myself and Digital Curator Stella Wisdom, have been working alongside collaborators from such disparate locations as Jerusalem, New York and Toronto, amongst others, to prepare materials, events and opportunities for the upcoming #1lib1ref campaign.

The next #1Lib1Ref runs from 15th May to 5th June 2021. This campaign, run by the Wikimedia Foundation, invites library staff and patrons to improve the reliability of sources in Wikipedia. Using the philosophy of ‘1 librarian, 1 reference’ the campaign focusses on filling in the gaps of missing references – if just one person adds just one reference, think of what we could do collectively! Full information can be found at the #1Lib1Ref Wikimedia page.

Ahead of this upcoming #1Lib1Ref, IFLA’s Wikidata and Wikibase Working Group are offering a Train-The-Trainers workshop, for up to 50 participants, on Wednesday 21st April at 16:00 CET. This training session, run by Meg Wacha of City University, New York, will show participants how to set up an event to contribute to Wikidata during the #1Lib1Ref campaign period. More details and registration for this online event on Wednesday 21st April can be found on the IFLA website here.

The group will provide resources that can help you learn how to edit Wikidata, and demonstrate the advantages that Wikidata provides for library collections. They will also be holding online weekly informal open office hours throughout May and early June, in which participants can seek advice and guidance from experienced Wikimedians. The British Library will be hosting one of these virtual office hour sessions on Wednesday 5^th of May at 3pm BST, details about these and how to book can be found here.

We hope to see you there!

This post is by Wikimedian in Residence Lucy Hinnie (@BL_Wikimedian)

The British Library and the British Fashion Council held a Virtual Awards Ceremony on 22^nd March to celebrate the results of the 2021 research inspired fashion design competition, part of an innovative collaboration between the British Library and the British Fashion Council. The event showcased examples of what has inspired a new generation of fashion designers who have explored the richness and potential of the Library’s extensive digital collections for a design project based on themes of ‘Identity’ or ‘Disruption’.

Earlier in the day a winner was selected by a panel of judges comprised of respected industry individuals including Anna Orsini, Strategic Consultant, British Fashion Council; Dal Chodha, Editor of non-seasonal publication Archivist, Writer & Consultant; Halina Edwards, Researcher, Lead Designer at The Black Curriculum and by the Library’s Daniel Lowe - Curator Arabic Collections. Nabil El Nayal, Designer and Course Leader MA Fashion Design Technology Womenswear, London College of Fashion undertook an advisory role for the judging day and the panel was chaired by Judith Rosser-Davies, Head of Government Relations & Education, Chair Colleges Council, British Fashion Council.  

In addition to the Judges' Award, an additional award - the Public Award was voted for by the online audience at the Awards event.

 

The Judges' Award

The winner of the Judges Award was Adela Babinska, MA Womenswear Student at the London College of Fashion. Her submission ‘NOT’ reflected on the absence of knowledge and on the need for persisting curiosity in our challenging times.

Winning entry by Adela Babinska

Adela arrived in London during lockdown from Slovakia as an international student and found herself in a strange new reality of being a London student in Covid times – studying online, meeting her colleagues and tutors online, and responding to our fashion competition without ever visiting the Library. Just as many other students, she discovered that the access to online resources, including at the British Library, is limited and, also, that she cannot complete the Library’s registration process during the lockdown. Normally in her research Adela would search for the answers, but in the absence of being able to visit the Library and with only limited access to online content, she found herself in a disruptive position, so she decided to explore how she could benefit from this.

In her submission, Adela referenced the same emotion that she felt after reading Waiting for Godot – which prompts many questions, but does not provide the answers. Rather than search for the answers she reflected that she needed to search for the questions and decided to generate as many queries as possible about the Library and to use these to guide her designs, including the intangibility of the Library during lockdown. Her research for this project led her to see that the mere act of not knowing can also be powerful.

Her thinking and questioning included a conceptualisation of the icon image on the Customer Services section of the BL website in relation to impersonality and distance. She also reflected on what accessing the BL Sound archives could bring to her research and referenced a recording of the foyer of the Library in which she could hear voices which made the Library seem more real to her.

As well as producing a fantastic fashion presentation, Adela’s experience and search for the Library amidst the current disruptions provides both a challenging and inspirational view of the Library from a student perspective.

 

The Public Award

The winner of the Public Award is Chiara Lamon, Fashion and Textile Student from Gray’s School of Art, based at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, with her submission ‘Morphe’.

Designs from the public award winner Chiara Lamon

 

Chiara analysed the idea of a malleable and dynamic identity through a study of body movement.  Her research approach focused on disrupting common ideas of the stillness and singularity of our identity. Using the Library’s online collections, she explored visual imagery, blogs, thematic pages books and ideas which she considered had a high impact on the quality and depth of her research. This experience helped Chiara reflect on how she now conducts research - researching opposites, making mistakes and looking for the unexpected, letting the research lead her rather than trying to control it.

Chiara’s research involved exploring the catalogues on futurism and cubism and discovering connection and metaphors in unexpected ways, such as from images of geological strata from the Library’s Flickr collection to represent layers of the self, building on the concept of the body multiple.

Engaging with practice led research Chiara was able to explore ideas from a digital and physical development for a more sustainable practice. Images that Chiara used from the Library’s digital collections included the work of photographer Ethienne Jules, images from geology and dance and a comparison of a multiple collar garment from Viktor and Rolf’s Autumn /Winter 2003 collection paired with an early portrait of a man in a collared shirt.

Chiara turned images from BL collections and abstracted forms into shapes to apply to the body as an experience for a multifaceted and morphing representation of the self and our dynamic nature.

 

The Finalists

Eight finalists were shortlisted from a strong field of 111 submissions for this year’s competition.

The six other finalists were:

Jordan Fergusson, Manchester Metropolitan University

Jordan's submission ‘The Tearlachs’, is based on a theme of disrupting the codes of highland dress and exploring gender. Jordan reflected on Jacobite poetry and song using multiple images, manuscripts and letters from the BL Collection and extracts from a Jacobite Songbook from 1863. The depictions in this book gave Jordan a strong sense of the character of a Tearlach (instigator).  Jordan presents the Tearlachs as gender non-conforming trailblazers of the highlands, embodying the Jacobite cause and romanticism of Scottish History. In designing his collection, Jordan used himself as a blank canvas to build up inspiration transferring it to 2D then back to 3D. His research led to Jordan to design a ‘warped tartan’ as his own interpretation of a’Tearlach Tartan’, inspired by graph-like images of the Aurora Borealis from the BL Collection.

Maria Fernanda Nava Melgar, Royal College of Art

Maria’s submission ‘The Invisibles’ explored identity through fundamental questions such as to what are we made of, how we are perceived and how are we are listened to. Her work took inspiration from chiaroscuro scientific paintings from the 18^th Century, medical journals and distorted sound recordings (Touch Radio) from the BL Collection.  Images of decay and cells were used to inform the design of her collection. Maria reflected on the relationship between light, space and sound and the human body and how the body is information made out of layers that are constantly being pressed and crushed against each other whist working together inside a system.

Emma Fraser, Gray’s School of Art, (Robert Gordon University Aberdeen)

Emma’s submission ‘Repair Yourself’ was based on a following a powerful, moving journey as a survivor of sexual assault and her message to other survivors that they are not alone. Emma used visual metaphors to explore the idea of trauma and recovery initially starting with the concept of damage and repair, reflected through her textile work and then through ideas of comfort and exposure. Another aspect of her work was exploring the over-sexualising of women and the idea of femininity by researching the BL archives.  Her submission included images from the Library’s s Flickr Collection -Women of the World. Emma intended her work as a representation of the courage and strength that it takes to go on such a journey of recovery, confirming that it was ‘not about the attackers, but about the survivors’.

Kelsey Ann Kasom, Royal College of Art        

Kelsey’s submission ‘Identity’ is based on the concept of the left side of her brain being her inner child the ‘past’ and right side of her brain being her creative genius – the ‘present’. Using research and images form the BL Collection her work focused on what can be created from harmonising these two aspects. Kelsey explored abstract feelings and surreal thought working to make sense of them three dimensionally ‘as an extension of the soul outside the body’. Kelsey experimented with the technical aspects of working with organza creating shapes for the body

Louise Korner, London College of Fashion

Louise’s submission ‘The Becoming’ focused on the theme of disruption as a design approach using a destructive force such as fire, (by watching objects burning), to lead to a greater understanding of fire as a transformative process and also to highlight current issues surrounding the fashion industry.  Using images and art work from the 18^th century from BL Collections, including an image of a forest fire, Louise reflected on what is left after the disruption of the landscape and what is regenerated after the fire. Louise used a disruptive approach to her research of the BL catalogues by mis - spelling words and entering words backwards in order ‘to stumble across an interesting recording or sound or art work.’ Her research led to her designing a ‘hidden garment withing a garment’ that the wearer decides when to reveal and garments that are sustainable that can be returned to the designer for repurposing.

Cameron Lyall, Gray’s School of Art, (Robert Gordon University Aberdeen)

Cameron’s submission ‘No Place’ is inspired by a theme of identity. It tells a story of the ‘pilgrim of no place’ and their journey, both physically and mentally to understand their own identity. This journey involves the pilgrim reflecting on history and what they have learnt and applying this to ‘a future forward-thinking attitude.’ Cameron’s concept was in response to his own journey in 2020.  His work included images from ancient philosophies, celestial esoterica and astrology from the BL Collection. For his designs, Cameron dissembled and reconstructed garments, some of which took on ‘symbiotic shapes reminiscent of beetles’ purposing and rebranding these garments into new concepts.

For any further information, email [email protected].