MEC Manchester Celebrates Creative Partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University

A second year of collaboration between MEC Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) came to a creative climax last week, as the agency sponsored two awards at the School of Art's annual Degree Show.

The event, which takes place at venues across the Manchester School of Art, opened for a special private viewing on Friday June 12th, with two of the MEC team in attendance to select and present honors to students for Creativity and Innovation and for the Best Work in the Film and Media show.

The exhibition also features material from the Unit X curriculum module, which MEC Manchester has been heavily involved with over the last 12 months.

Alongside lectures and seminars conducted by MEC staff at the university, Unit X students were invited to the agency’s Manchester office to take part in ideas generator sessions for live client briefs. The output from these sessions were then refined and presented back to MEC clients, with student workshops arranged later to progress these ideas even further. 

Dr. Emily Brick, Programme Leader on Film and Media Studies, commented: “Both myself and Paul Booth who worked on the project with MEC are extremely proud of the work our students produced. It displays the diversity of their talent and creativity.

“Our students have really benefitted from working with the MEC staff on live briefs. We are extremely grateful to MEC and the time and support they have given us on this project.”

Noel Mellor, Senior Content Manager and MMU Film and Media alumnus followed a year of lectures on topics around blogging, social media and commercial content production for Unit X by joining MEC Strategy Manager Dr. Helen Payne to select and present three awards at the event.

The biggest honour of the evening, the Best in Show Award, went to Fatima Sharah for her film and photography project Stories From the Borderline, which takes an intimate look inside the lives of refugees along the Turkish Syrian border.

“We were just so impressed with not just the quality of Fatima’s work, but the story she had to share behind it,” Noel explained. “Fatima’s background and ability to speak the language so fluently has given her some fantastic access, which really came across in the interviews she conducted.”

Elsewhere, the Unit X award for Creativity and Innovation was given to Zen Luwe for his multi-platform content work for Danish fashion outlet Rains DK and Manchester-born musician Bipolar Sunshine.

“Zen has displayed a real passion for content production that goes well beyond the requirements of his degree, proving he has a real commercial sensibility,” Helen said. “Not only that, but his work feels naturally rooted in the kind of socially sharable mechanisms that are so important to what we focus on as an agency these days.”

As a Film and Media Studies graduate, Noel also presented an Alumni award, which he gave to Lucy Ryan for her two short documentaries Young at Heart and Growing Old Gracefully.

“Lucy’s films had a real sense of style and a finesse that shows genuine, natural talent,” Noel explained. “There’s a real demand for creative people who can deliver a fresh approach to visual storytelling in our industry – and Lucy really has what it takes to be one of them.”

Showcasing work across degree subjects like architecture, creative multimedia, fashion, film and media, graphic design, photography and interactive arts, the MMU School of Art's annual Degree Show takes place between June 13th and 24th and is now open to the general public. Work can be viewed at the university’s Benzie Building, Chatham Building, Grosvenor Building and Holden Gallery Monday to Friday 10am to 6pm, and Saturday and Sunday 10am until 4pm.