MDX’s vibrant 2025 Degree Show Festival summons all the emotions

"You feel the creativity hitting you in the face when you enter the Grove,” says 3D Animation graduate

This year’s North London Degree Show Festival, E:motions, showcasing the work of new MDX graduates in arts and creative subjects, kicked off with a buzzing Opening Night on Thursday 22 May.

The Grove Atrium became a catwalk, with models criss-crossing between static displays and visitors packing the galleries. For the second year running, fashion platform SHOWstudio hosted the Fashion graduates’ film Lookbook on its platform live.

Work by BA Film students played in the basement cinema, hot on the heels of 2024 MDX Film and Animation graduates’ success in the RTS London region Student TV Awards. 

On the second floor, Paul Duffield, art director of acclaimed modern children’s comic The Phoenix, presented prizes to Illustration graduates for star submissions to a project set up by MDX Professor of Creative Industries Phil Cleaver.

The creative identity for the show, featuring brightly coloured ideograms representing faces, was developed by third year Graphic Design students in collaboration with Animation and Film colleagues, under the mentorship of lecturer Billy Kiosoglu. 

Graphic Design graduate Raiyaan Omar said: “It’s been so much fun developing our concept and seeing it come to life!”

3D Animation graduate Rugiyya Gorbani says that the moment you enter Grove Building, "you feel the creativity hitting you in the face”.

Her final project - an animated short about a mischievous kid trying to sort out chaos he's created at the Natural History Museum - pushed her beyond her comfort zone of hyper-real animation and made her realise she enjoyed making stylized, cartoonish work too. 

"Choosing art was a major risk and I am not regretting it,” says Rugiyya, a maths and physics student at high school who had to go abroad for 3D animation as no institution in her home country offers it. She suspects the cultural diversity at MDX and in London is an experience she couldn't have found elsewhere in Europe.

Using the Unity game engine, BA Games & Level Design graduate Kingsley Kiala-Baseya (pictured above) has built a 3D 'God game' where the player is bent on evil, destabilising the population of a series of planets by poisoning their water supply or destroying their armies.

After each atrocity, however, the civilisation you've displaced will come after you, so your actions have consequences, he says.

Originally he planned for players to choose between good and evil mode, but he “believes people find being the villain a bit more exciting”.

Kingsley, an East Londoner, started designing games five years ago as part of a college IT module. MDX’s Games Design academics “go out of their way to help out", he says, hailing senior lecturer Penda Tomlinson as "an inspiration and very welcoming as a person".

For her final year project - a life and lifestyle magazine called Pulse - Advertising, PR and Branding student Zita Puentespina relished learning from CDS services in the Shepherd Library the technical language of printing, "...crop marks and margins and bleeds and slugs."

She made Pulse a hybrid product, in print as well as online, out of a desire to see it "cut up, used for vision boards, journaling, or inspired passion projects - to infuse itself in the lives of readers". 

Among Gen Z contemporaries, she senses a shift back to wanting a media product you can touch. Meanwhile, she was gratified to rack up 10,000 views and 370 likes on Instagram in seven hours for a post on the project.

When she began at MDX, she was "shy and afraid to speak up” according to her lecturers, but now describes herself as "a completely different person," who has thrived under a more fluid, autonomous academic culture than that in Hong Kong where she grew up.

"My professors see my value and push me to my limit,” she says. “They've encouraged me to be critical of my own work and how I can progress from there.”

Echoing Zita is her coursemate Eshita Ranai, whose final project is a strategic campaign for a cosmetics brand entering the UK market, including a limited edition 'London Rush' collection inspired by city landmarks.

She loved the breadth of her degree and its emphasis on individual expression and industry relevance. Her lecturers "encouraged strategic thinking, supported me in developing my voice, looked at drafts and encouraged me to do better, and shared valuable real world experience".

Interior Design graduate Dariana Konyicska was inspired by fashion designer Nigel Xavier's upcycled patchwork clothes for her space showcasing a sustainable approach to fashion. Her project incorporates workshop and retail areas, with a fashion runway to display new looks, and a basement to drop off unwanted clothes items to give them a second life.

Dariana says that growing up in Romania, it was property show Visuri la cheie (‘Dreams at the Key’), where a design team creates a liveable home for a disadvantaged family, which made her want to become an interior designer. In five or ten years, she says, "I hope to create my own community hub where young adults have a chance to figure themselves out.”

Also passionate about sustainability is Architectural Technology student Kristin Gray, from Manchester, who chose a lattice structure for her task of designing a 100 metre tall office building to cut down the number of internal columns needed. For a project to propose an energy efficient refurbishment of MDX's Williams Building, she reused the windows and aluminium frames of the façade for an inner void space and meeting rooms.

"I think when people understand more about sustainability, all new builds will be sustainable," she says. Having previously studied a year of Architecture at another institution, she finds Architectural Technology, with its problem-solving focus, has "opened a lot more doors - this is what practices want".

For her project Eclipse, Photography graduate Karolina Iracka seeks to offer viewers "a break and peace of mind" from the stresses of modern life with "melancholic" nature images overlaid with ambient music. Inspired by Anselm Adams and Finnish nature photographer Santeri Tuori, Karolina plans both to diversify her soundtracks, and to combine music with the experimental photography, producing fractal-stylce imagery, which she has also been pursuing.

Fashion graduate Muhsina Ahmed (on the left above, with model Estellia McFarlane) looked at the traditional festival clothing, accessories and henna designs of her Bengali culture, to incorporate these into contemporary style. She sees huge potential in creative pollination of modest dressing with street wear - "you have the over-sized; you have volume - you have so much you can play around with”. She hopes to partner clothing producers in her home country.

Illustration student Yang Hui Xin uses around ten different virtual brushes to create texture in her opulent fantasy-style digital work: such as under-sea, sky and woodland glade images inspired by Titanic composer James Horner's music, for the Sound of Cinema project with London Philharmonic Orchestra and JMG Studio.

Growing up in Malaysia, she came to MDX to "experience different cultures, different types of education", and relishes the open-mindedness of study in the UK.

Interior Architecture student Kaleena Creary (pictured above)- shortlisted at the 2024 Interior Educators Awards alongside coursemate Miraj Patel - is one of a number of MDX creative stars who eagerly took on Student Voice Leader and Student Learning Assistant roles to support peers and younger cohorts.

“I don’t like to see anyone struggle,” she says. "Especially because this course is so challenging, I want to see people win.”

Her advice to prospective students: “Don’t isolate yourself. Make friends, be kind to everyone, help everyone out. Be respectful.”

Dariana Konyicska says she loved her role as a Student Learning Assistant for two years.

Last year, she says, “I was working with a class that was very creative, very open. I was able to understand them, put myself in their shoes. I’ve been through the years they’re going through. It was a joy and a pleasure to be around them.”

The Degree Show Festival will be open to the public every weekday until 17 June.

This year’s Film graduate showcase will be held at the Everyman Broadgate cinema on Tuesday 24 May, while short films by MDX Animation graduates will be premiered at the Garden Cinema near Holborn Tube that evening.

A symposium to launch the Intellect Handbook of Popular Music Methodologies, co-edited by MDX BA Music programme leader Mike Dines, will take place at the Grove on Wednesday 18 June.

MA Interiors students’ projects looking at alternative uses of buildings in North Finchley that minimise carbon emissions are on show in the Grove, as part of London Festival of Architecture and Barnet Climate Action Month.