A recent graduate of Edinburgh Napier’s MA Lighting Design programme has won a top industry award.
Emma Beadle – a graduate of both the University’s BA Interior and Spatial Design and MA Light Design courses – has been announced as the winner of The Society of Light and Lighting Young Lighter of the Year award for 2017.
The graduate was one of four young lighting design professionals shortlisted for the award. Each finalist delivered a 15 minutes paper at the LuxLive conference and trade show heled at the Excel Centre in London on 15 November.
Emma is the first Edinburgh Napier graduate to come out on top in the prestigious competition.
However, the good news did not stop there, as Emma also took home the prize for best-written paper.
Her paper, "Children's Utopian Visions of the City: co-designing lighting masterplans through play and exploration”, was based directly on her major design project and dissertation undertaken as part of her MA Lighting Design at Edinburgh Napier where she used co-design methodologies to work with groups of young people in Edinburgh to empower them to redesign their city.
Since graduating from her Masters programme in 2017, Emma took up a job as a lighting designer in the London office of WSP. With 550 offices in 40 countries, WSP is one of the world’s leading engineering services companies.
Emma’s incredible research work will receive further public exposure as she is also shortlisted for the semi-finals of ’The Challenge’ a global competition to discover inspiring young lighting professionals.
Of the eighteen semi-finalists in this competition, Emma is one of three Edinburgh Napier graduates. Egle Prokopaviciute and Valeria Bencardino graduated with an MA Lighting Design in 2018 and, like Emma; they will be travelling to Berlin at the end of January to take part in the semi-final conference.
Well done to all!