Having recently graduated with first-class honours in Design for Textiles from Heriot-Watt University, Emma exhibited her final year pieces at the Business Design Centre this summer.  This is a showcase for emerging talent in the design field and had over 1500 graduates and post-graduates from around the UK exhibiting their work - ranging from textiles, print and knit to ceramics and jewellery.  Emma was delighted to be one of four exhibitors to be short-listed for the coveted Young Designer of the Year Award.  Although she was not the overall winner, this was an amazing achievement given the quality and range of those participating.

Commenting, Emma said, “I was delighted to be shortlisted for the Young Designer of the Year award and really enjoyed presenting my work to the judging panel.  I found the New Designers expo really inspiring and loved seeing the work of my contemporaries.  I hope to continue my studies to Masters level after first taking a gap year and owe a huge debt of gratitude to Sidcot for introducing me to textiles design when I was a student there.”

Donna Ralph, Teacher of Textiles at Sidcot added, “It’s wonderful to follow the progress of our Textiles students as they build careers around their passion, and of course to have witnessed their talent blossom and flourish at Sidcot. Emma was always a hardworking, diligent student whose potential and talent was clear to see.

"I also had the pleasure of Emma joining me last week to pass some of her skills on to the next generation of Sidcot young designers (see gallery below), where she led a crochet workshop for Year 10 GCSE students - it's so wonderful to see Old Scholars pass on their knowledge back in school! Well done Emma, I am excited to see what the future holds for you after your Masters' degree."

Emma follows in the footsteps of many successful Textiles graduates from Sidcot, including Jiazhen Xie (S: Class of 2017) and Maddy Hann (S: Class of 2018), the former of which had her work featured in December 2021’s Vogue, and the latter who had her work showcased at Graduate Fashion Week, part of London Fashion Week 2021.