Inocente, Rooftop Films and the Fledgling Fund

Inocente from Fine Films on Vimeo.

As part of New Designs' partnership with Rooftop Films, and in partnership with the Fledgling Fund, New Design will be premiering the Oscar winning short documentary film Inocente to its students.  The film is about a young teenage homeless artist from San Diego.  The story is about the transformative power of art, the courage of a young person and the face of teenage homelessness in America.  The Fledgling Fund has sponsored a Rooftop Films teaching artist to work with students in New Design's Mediastorm class in creating their media project logos.  Students in the course has chosen their own media projects for the year from documentary films to fashion blogs to DJ collectives.  Check out Arieyl's first attempt at a video fashion blog and Young Legendz Productions first draft of a trailer for their documentary film Rooftop Legends.

Rooftop Films will be presenting films on our rooftop space beginning May 10th with over 15 evening movies through July 19th.  You can see the summer schedule here.  We are excited a new partnership for the film series this year as Hester Street Fair will be providing food and drink vendors for all the films.  Both organizations donate funds and resources to sustain New Design's design programs.

Here is the logo designed as part of the project for the Mediastorm class:

Julie Z, Jaipur and the Cosmo Hotel

Design Teacher Julie Zenobi

Congrats to Fashion and Textile design teacher Julie who won the prestigious Boston Arts Academy National Artist Teacher Fellowship for 2013.  The award provides Julie with a stipend to expand her personal design experience.  Julie has selected to visit Jaipur, India this summer where she will learn centuries old textile printing techniques including hand block printing with local master artists at the Bagru Textiles Studio.  As part of the fellowship Julie will be teaching the 350 year old hand block process to her students starting in the 2013-2014 school year. 

Julie's fashion and textile class have teamed up with the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Tribeca, to assist in their new room renovations. Owner Gerald Barad proposed the need for a coordinating textile design that will be in each new room. New Design students have been studying textile design and submitted a series of their own interpretation of the new Cosmopolitan Hotel aesthetic. Twelve semi-finalists have been selected and will be visiting and revising their final designs this April. One talented student will have their final design selected to be manufactured into a pillow that will be in each room!"

 Cosmo Hotel owner Gerald B checking out students designs

NDHS Students at New York Fashion Week

New Designers at the Yuna Yang Fashion Show UAP Master Class with Yuna Yang Three New Design braved the blizzard to sit in the front row of their first New York Fashion Week presentation! They were invited by designer Yuna Yang, who met them and their classmates when she led a fashion illustration workshop. In the workshop, part of the Urban Arts Partnership Master Class series, Yuna discussed inspiration and theme with the students before demonstrating a pencil and watercolor sketch. The class then used a inspirational item or image that they were asked to bring to sketch their own original piece. Anthony, Nicolle, and Aneesa learned how a theme (in this case, Italian romance) is expressed through all the elements of the show, from the music to the models' hairstyles to the programs. We want to send a huge thank you to Yuna, UAP and her team for making it possible for us to attend, and congratulations on a gorgeous spring collection!