A minute of fame with “Lancôme Celebrates Creativity:
Developing Youth In Arts” project
To celebrate 75 years of beauty and innovation, Lancôme Singapore partnered SOTA in the Lancôme Celebrates Creativity: Developing Youth In Arts project, an adoption of “Lancôme Revelations”, a merit-based scholarship programme in partnership with Carla Bruni-Sarkozy Foundation* founded by the incumbent First Lady of France.
SOTA students were required to create a short one-minute flash format video (and also journal their inspiration behind their multimedia creation) that clearly articulated the three key embodiments of the Lancôme brand, namely “Innovation, “Creativity” and “Beauty and Femininity”, which are a salient part of Lancôme’s celebrating 75 years of beauty a la francaise.
Since the call for entries was made in end February 2010, an overwhelming response of 24 entries was received, most of which were au pair or group submissions by Year 3 and 4 students. After a few rounds of previews and internal judging, the list boiled down to seven entries vying for the three top spots. One winning entry was chosen from each thematic category and the entry received a fully sponsored academic year worth of tuition fees, approximately S$5,000.
The panel of judges included Head of SOTA Faculty of Visual Arts, Ye Shufang; Head of Art at Publicis Singapore, Kris Ng; L'Oréal Singapore’s General Manager of Luxury Products Division, Isabelle Svartstein-Bourjade and Lancôme’s brand manager, Ivy Li.
The entries were scored against a rigorous rubric that evaluated them based on criteria such as the manipulation of technology, how aesthetics and values were interpreted, innovativeness of the students’ approach as well as the ability of the final video to evoke emotions and engage the audience.
“The deliberation process was no doubt intense and it was extremely hard for the panel to derive the final three winners. All the entries were creative in their own right,” says Ye.
“Clearly going beyond simply incorporating content that exemplifies the three key salient values of the Lancôme brand: “Innovation”, “Creativity” and “Beauty and Femininity”, it is very heartening for us to see the brand being interpreted in so many different ways and just how infinitely creative the students really are,” says Svartstein-Bourjade.
Believe in Beauty, by Jade Chan Su Hui and Janel Ang Jia En, is a heart-warming plot centring around how love and beauty transcends three generations of women within a family — inspired by their personal childhood memoirs. Bevin Ng Jie Wei and Mariel Chee Wei Lin, won, on the other hand, for their interpretation of beauty as an element that is pure and untainted, which was exhibited in their video chronicling a group of little girls unbridled and full of joie de vivre. The video, Innocence was shot in tandem with a score sung by a talented teenage chanteuse that altogether encapsulated the essence of natural beauty and pure raw talent. Kirti Upadhyaya and Valerie Ng Suying, succeeded in Amalgamation, an artistic rendering of a collection of black and white sepia photos featuring youths by digitally “applying makeup” to the images and then videoed them under water.
“We were really inspired by the Lancôme Hypnôse bottles as we like how the glass packaging could distort and project images in a fun and quirky way,” says Upadhyaya.
“Through this project, we learned not only about new artistic techniques, how to edit videos with new software but also hone our creativity and thought processes,” says Ng.
Students who participated in the project certainly walked away with more than what they had expected. “Working on this as a team brought us both closer together as friends too and that’s something we didn’t expect, much less to win the scholarship,” adds Chan.
“This is indeed an exciting collaboration between Lancôme and SOTA. Personally, it’s great to witness the children delving deeper into the notion of inner beauty and melded, as demonstrated through their videos, their own identities, heritage and personalities creating original pieces of work,” says SOTA Principal, Mrs Rebecca Chew.
“Such an opportunity allows for authentic learning for the children, and to connect their learning to the real world. The takeaway — apart from the scholarship — is probably the kind of satisfaction of seeing their works appreciated by the general public and industry practitioners, beyond their schoolmates, teachers and the classroom walls,” says SOTA Vice Principal for Development, Dr Yap Meen Sheng.
The three winning works - Believe in Beauty, Innocence and Amalgamation - will be broadcast on Lancôme Singapore’s 75th anniversary website www.lancome75years.com.sg along with the students’ journalistic records of their inspiration and journey throughout this artistic endeavour. The winning works will also be showcased at key celebratory events organised by Lancôme Singapore in 2010.
To view the winning works, please go to www.lancome75years.com.sg.
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*About the Carla Bruni-Sarkozy Foundation
The foundation was created with a singular purpose, that is, to encourage access to culture, education and knowledge in order to fight social inequality. The comprises several programmes designed to promote the fight against illiteracy, access to arts and culture, digital solidarity by diffusing free and qualitative artistic content, and last but by no means least, access for students from even the most modest backgrounds to major art schools.