Leominster Cultural Consortium has revealed its new logo and brand identity courtesy of Hereford College of Arts students who took part in a special project to come up with a winning design. The Consortium was formed in 2021 and successfully won a bid for funding from the national £95 million High Streets Heritage Action Zone initiative. Leominster’s portion of funding is set to support a series of cultural programme of events to encourage community engagement with the arts and offer some exciting creative opportunities to local people.
The cultural programme being delivered by the Consortium will be known as Leominster Roars, a play on the history of the ancient town and is set to be rolled out over the next three years. As part of the project, which seeks to nurture and express local creative talent, the Consortium asked students from Hereford College of Arts to research and design a Leominster Roars logo to represent the cultural programme. Fourteen design students took part in the competition and created detailed presentations of their research into Leominster with clear, professional explanations of their artistic decisions and final graphics. The winning logo was created by Elise D’Arcy and was selected as the winner following a scoring system to identify the design which best reflected the brief, displayed flair and originality, and fit the Leominster Roars watchwords, ‘vibrant, unexpected, high energy, quirky and fresh’.
‘We were absolutely blown away by the quality of the students work. They treated the project as a professional piece of work and the results were 14 well thought out, beautifully presented logos and accompanying graphics. A huge thank you to all the students who took part, on the basis of what we have seen, there is a wealth of design talent in our local area and we were delighted to work with the students”, said Cultural Consortium Officer Rachel Buchanan who managed the design competition.
Alison Eddy, Module Leader at Hereford College of Arts added, “It was fantastic for students to work on such a creative brief, with such a positive focus on empowering a community. A great opportunity for students to see their work applied to many different areas, such as on a website, poster or a leaflet…plus, they might even see someone wearing one of their designs as a badge during an event. It was also very useful and heartening to be able to share well-informed and positive feedback from an obviously committed panel of people from the Leominster consortium”.
The winning design created by Elise will be used to represent Leominster Roars for the three years of the project. Elise commented, “I wanted my design to bring a bright burst of colour to the town, one which would reflect the flowing voices of the people, the poetry, and the river. I also wanted to create an illustration to provoke an inviting atmosphere but one that also encouraged the people to be brave and strong together”.
The programme of Leominster Roars events has already begun with some creative ‘taster’ sessions. Students from Westfield Walk Sixth Form have been looking at lions and their importance in Leominster’s history producing some beautiful artwork displayed in the Tourist Information Centre. About Face Theatre are delivering a living history project about Church Street and plans are in place for Earl Mortimer College students to get involved in exploring the lion theme and an exciting community stilt walking workshop is up and coming for Barons Cross residents in March. There is much more in planning and due to be rolled out in the run up to the official launch of Leominster Roars on the Queens Jubilee weekend and as part of the Leominster Festival taking place between 3rd and 6th June 2022.
Leominster Festival 