Fashion media students organise events for Carbon Live 2023

Carbon Live (the live events arm of Solent Fashion Media and Solent Fashion and Beauty Media’s Carbon Magazine project) has staged four events this winter (week commencing November 27th) to raise funds for charity and engage with our internal and external community. Held as part of a final year event management module, students worked together to ideate, plan and stage a week-long timetable of events both on campus and in the local community, and raising over £300 for their chosen charities. The events were: 

Monday Night at the Movies

A retro screening of the movie Clueless, alongside a charity drive for Smalls for All (a local charity that collects underwear for people in Africa and the UK who can’t afford or can’t access these functional items) and Coppafeel (a charity aiming to educate Gen Z about breast cancer in young men and women). The event saw members of the NHS, charities, hospices and student and youth networks come together for an awareness talk, networking and treats before a screening of the film in the Sonar Cinema.

Kat Stothert, event manager said, “There were a lot of skills used in order to ensure the organising and smooth running of this event. We all had our roles to play, and all demonstrated our individual strengths to get tasks completed efficiently. I enjoy event planning and could see it featuring in my future career.”

SHEIN X Sip and Paint

Sponsored by international brand SHEIN, the ‘Sip and Paint’ event saw students from all creative courses at Solent and members of our local creative community attend an evening of industry talks, painting and competitions to find the next creative/designer who went on to win mentoring from the brand as part of the design hub incubator programme. Students, creatives and staff members were offered the chance to paint to a design brief and have their work judged by the SHEIN creative and community team and win mentoring that would support them in creating designs that could go into production and be sold on the international platform. The SHEIN X programme aims to make the business of fashion more accessible to the next generation of creatives providing unprecedented access to the SHEIN community of customers and support in helping emerging designers to scale up their businesses.

The winner of the SHEIN X event was a Solent BA (Hons) Illustration student who was thrilled to now go on to receive mentoring and set the wheels in motion to potentially launch a career in fashion.

The event also raised money for the Southampton Hospitals Charity Art Project.

Event manager, Sofia Wells, said, “Studying Fashion Media helped prepare me to be project manager of the Sip and Paint event. An example of this is working in group settings regularly, working for brands and organising creative work. This provided a sense of professionalism, planning skills with a tight timeline and organising.”

Fashion Futures in Comfort

This employability and B3 focused event saw almost 100 fashion and marketing students descend on the Dock, the University’s canteen, for an evening of professional, alumni and employer talks about preparing for a career after graduation, tips on how to get the most out of their third year, the importance of supporting and staying connected to your university, NSS and all things graduate success.

Students enjoyed food and drink while a panel spanning recently graduated fashion media students, to more seasoned fashion media and fashion graphics alumni chatted alongside employers, Head of Copy at Gymshark, SHEIN and a Dior mentor discussing their career successes, the benefits of having a degree from Solent, and advice they would give to their younger self about to embark on their final year of a degree again.

Invaluable advice and supportive hints and tips were the order of the evening as panel guests shared how ready and confident they felt starting their industry careers all culminating in a DJ set from Solent's very own Steve Middleton (Midtone Music). Abby Prowse, the event manager, said, “We developed our presentation, organisation and management skills over the term to produce an event that was helpful and insightful for fashion students. We were able to reach out to many guest speakers via our lecturer’s connections, to create a varied and interesting panel for our conversations.”

Winter Sports Day

This event saw Solent students from across the University take on sports teams and competitive colleagues from the University of Southampton in a ‘Battle of the Unis’ contest to raise money for Student Mind. In a bid to offer some light relief in the exam and assessment period and encourage students to put down their work and focus on fun, the nostalgic Winter Sports Event saw traditional school sports day events staged in the multi-sports hall of Solent’s Sports Complex for an afternoon of light-hearted fun and friendly community banter in aid of a good cause.

The championship battle saw Solent crowned the winner and students from both universities left with prizes and information on the work carried out by the charity Student Mind and advice on how to handle exam and assessment stress in the run-up to hand ins.