and the Iconique Societás Awards 2009 nominees are…

After a record number of entries, selecting the nominees for the Iconique Societás Awards™ for excellence in the fashion visual arts 2009 was no easy task. However, after much deliberation Iconique and Societás™ have selected twenty-three of the world's best emerging fashion photographers, illustrators and stylists and the jury will soon be casting their votes to select this year's winners and finalists.

Iconique Societás Awards 'Excellence in Fashion Photography Award™ 2009' nominees are:

Dido Fontana, Italy
Eui Jin Lee, Republic of Korea
Herman van Gestel, Netherlands
Irina Heer, Germany
Jake Garn, United States
Jennifer Endom, United Kingdom
Liselotte Schuppers, Netherlands
Marcelle Te Huia, New Zealand
Markus Van Driel, Netherlands
Michael Bader, Germany
Yannick Verdier Monsegur, France







(Images Above: Fashion Photography Award Nominee Michael Bader)






(Images Above: Fashion Photography Award Nominee Markus Van Driel)








(Images Above: Fashion Photography Award Nominee Eui Jin Lee)


The Iconique Societás Awards 'Excellence in Fashion Illustration Award™ 2009' nominees are:

Adriana Munoz, United Kingdom
Aleksandra Stojadinov, Netherlands
Baiba Ladiga, Latvia
Jaume Vilardell, Netherlands
Sanne van Winden, Netherlands
Spela Tabak, Netherlands
Wang Youyi, China



(Images Above: Fashion Illustration Award Nominee Sanne van Winden)




(Images Above: Fashion Illustration Award Nominee Spela Tabak)




(Images Above: Fashion Illustration Award Nominee Jaume Vilardell)


The Iconique Societás Awards 'Excellence in Fashion Styling Award™ 2009' nominees are:

Ashburn Eng, Singapore
Baida Ladiga, Latvia
Isabel Felmer, Chile
Isis Vaandrager, Netherlands
Sara Darling, United Kingdom








(Images Above: Fashion Styling Award Nominee Ashburn Eng)







(Images Above: Fashion Styling Award Nominee Isis Vaandrager)






(Images Above: Fashion Styling Award Nominee Isabel Felmer)

Iconique Societás Awards founders Joost van Gorsel and Melissa Sterry extend their congratulations to all this year’s nominees. Joost, Melissa and the rest of the awards jury members, including Sandor Lubbe, Louis Mariette, Natalia Allen, Millie Ross, Filep Motwary, Emma Day, Courtney Blackman, Michael Dye, Rod Roodenburg, Emma Hack and Samata Angel will be casting their votes in the coming days. We will be announcing the winners and first and second runners-up on the awards Twitter page. We will also be loading the nominee entries to the awards online gallery, which launches next week.

Each of our three category winners will win editorial in Iconique and the titles of our media partners, including jotta.com magazine. The overall winner of the Iconique Societás Awards 2009 will win a Key-2 Luxury, dubbed ‘the ultimate’ gift by the Financial Times.

We are proud to announce that in 2010 we will be launching a fourth awards category, adding ‘Excellence in Fashion Filmmaking’ adding to the existing awards for fashion photography, fashion illustration and fashion styling.





(Images Above: Fashion Photography Award Nominee Herman van Gestel)


Iconique and Societás are inviting further media partners on board for 2010. Joining our existing media partner jotta.com, will be WWM (What Women Make) – the New York-based international network championing female creatives and innovators.

Want to become a media partner of the Iconique Societás Awards 2010? If so drop us a line at hello (@) societas.ltd.uk. To join us as a media partner you must be an organisation championing emerging creative talent and you must also show a sustained commitment to excellence in the visual arts and sustainability.

The Iconique Societás Awards have been championing the world's best emerging visual arts talent since 2007. If you're interested in becoming a sponsor or supporter, drop us a line!






(Images Above: Fashion Photography Award Nominee Jennifer Endom)

Media Monopoly vs Media Democracy

Media Monopoly vs Media Democracy

View more documents from Societás.

Societás Founder Melissa Sterry's provocation 'Media Monopoly vs Media Democracy', presented at the InterACT Participatory Media Forum '09 today, asked the question 'do we really need mainstream media anymore?'

Referencing a number of emerging social media and technology trends, as well as emerging economic, cultural and socio-demographic trends, Melissa highlighted the potential of crowd created media networks. Questioning the validity of mainstream media - giving examples of misleading content printed in national newspapers and aired on national news television networks, Melissa illustrated that bloggers already have all the technology they need to create crowd funded, crowd sourced, crowd policed, crowd promoted and crowd distributed local, national and global news channels.

Do you have a view on Media Monopoly vs Media Democracy? Do you share Melissa's view that crowd-sourced news reporting will emerge as a major trend in social media? We're taking the debate to Twitter - tweet us your thoughts using hashtag #mediafutures.

Who's holding the camera?

How has access to cheap digital media - film, video, the Internet and mobile devices - changed how we learn and how we live? What is the role of digital media makers in shaping meaning, creating value and bringing about social change? What is the 'second story' of the media - the story of it's making?

Who's holding the camera is a 2-day residency/symposium which will act as a pilot Participatory Media Forum meeting.

The residency will discuss:

What is Participatory Video (PV)? How does it relate to other Participatory Practices within digital media - Participatory Media (PM)?

What are the key themes, questions, issues and trends that arise within PV & PM?

What are the things practitioners and their commissioners should be thinking about?

Is there a PV & PM community and sector? What are the best ways to promote and support it? How can PV & PM raise their profile?

What are the PV & PM community's future needs and how can they be fulfilled?

Speakers include Lizbeth Goodman - Research Director for FutureLab Education: the world's leading think and do tank on the future of education and Legacy Chair of Creative Technology Innovation at the University of East London, Julia and Rick Goldsmith of Catcher Media - specialists in working with young people on process-led participatory video and media projects for clients including The Welsh Assembly and The Department for International Development, practice-based researcher and workshop facilitator Kieron Kirkland of FutureLab, Dr. Ian McCormick of ICFILM, Bruce Goodison of Leave to Remain - a BAFTA winning and Emmy nominated short film maker and Steve Goodman - founding executive director of EVC.

Societás founder & CEO Melissa Sterry will be giving a provocation at the symposium, challenging participants to consider news ways of engaging with film and digital media, as a means of encouraging social change and sustainable business practice.

The residency is taking place on the 2nd and 3rd December 2009 at Poulstone Court, Herefordshire. Those unable to attend will be able to join us live online via Twitter and Skype conferencing throughout the event.

and the nominees are…

Entries to the Creative Graduate Prize 2009 came from the far corners of the world. Responses to the entry brief of ‘Change’ were diverse, which combined with the exceptional standard of the entries made selecting the nominees a very hard task! However, after much deliberation the nominees have been selected.


The Creative Graduate Prize 2009 nominees:

British Photographer and London Metropolitan University graduate Andrew James Skidmore

Italian Photographer and University of Architecture of Florence graduate Azzura Piccardi

British Filmmaker and Swansea Metropolitan University graduate Ben Williams

Lithuanian Photographer and University of Bedfordshire graduate Dalia Merecinskaite

British Photographer and The Sir John Cass School of Art graduate David George

Dutch Installation Artist and Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Florian de Visser

British Painter and University of Hertfordshire graduate Grace J Ward

Polish Sculptor and Krakow Academy of Fine Arts graduate Halina Mrozek

British Painter and University College Falmouth graduate Hayley Ditchburn

British Painter and Loughborough University graduate Leanne Rutter

Polish Photographer and Fachhochschule Bielefeld University graduate Malwine Rafalski

Japanese Illustrator and New York School of Visual Arts graduate Yoko Furusho

The prize categories are: Static Art, Moving Art and Installation Art and three winners and two runners-up will be announced later this month.




(Illustrations above: Yoko Furusho's entry to the Creative Graduate Prize)


Founded in 2005 by web platform Medium Magazine and Societás - the Creative Graduate Prize kick-starts the careers of talented visual arts graduates, bringing their work to the attention of leaders in the creative industries. The prize is a platform to recognise the best emerging illustrators, photographers, painters, animators, short filmmakers and installation artists worldwide; past winners have come from as far a field as a remote province in rural China, Washington DC and Cardiff.

The awards jury is made up of innovators from the international creative industries including contemporary artists Stuart Semple and Tessa Farmer, Penny Martin of the London College of Fashion, photographer Ellis Scott, Design Laboratory/Jotta.com Director Yann Mathias, sculptor Lone Sigurdsson known for her collaborations with amongst others Hussain Chalayan, Award-winning creative director Justin Champney, digital artist Eileen Botsford, Fake Magazine editors Lola Fernandez and Rafa Rodriguez, ERROREzine Editor Nacho Jiménez Bas, Duane Melius MD of Sense Media, Creativepool MD Michael Tomes and awards founders Laurie Cansfield publisher of Medium Magazine and Melissa Sterry founder and CEO of Societás.



(Film above: Ben Williams' entry to the Creative Graduate Prize)


Past winners and runner-ups include amongst others:

Canadian photographer Edith Maybin – Static Art Prize 2008

Filmmaker Carla Pott of Mozambique – Moving Art Prize 2008

French Artist Matthieu Gadoin - Installation Art Prize 2008

Irish Artist Emmet Kierans – 1st Runner-Up 2008

English artist Emma Perry – 2nd Runner-Up 2008

New York photographer Carrie Schechter - Static Art Prize 2007

Cardiff-based Filmmaker Gareth Lloyd - Moving Art Prize 2007

Artist Cai Jia Eng of Singapore – 1st Runner-Up 2007

Italian photographer Elena Arzani – 2nd Runner-Up 2007

Illustrator Li Li of China – Static Art Prize 2006

Photographer Lyza R. Perrenoud of Washington – 1st Runner-Up 2006

Photographer Judith Erwes of Germany – 2nd Runner-Up 2006

British Photographer Jessica Zetterstrom – Winner 2005



(Installation above: Florian de Visser's entry to the Creative Graduate Prize)




(Photographs above: David George's entry to the Creative Graduate Prize)

Keep up to date with the latest Creative Graduate Prize on Twitter.

Sourcing Sustainable Design Solutions

Biomimicry In Design Greengaged 2009

View more documents from Societás.

Societás Founder & CEO Melissa Sterry's presentation 'Biomimicry in Design | Sourcing Sustainable Design Solutions in the 21st Century' shown at Greengaged '09 at the Design Council on 23rd September 2009 is now online at Slide Share.

The Emerging Principles of 21st Century Design

Building Tomorrows World 2009

View more documents from Societás.

Those who missed Societás founder & CEO Melissa Sterry's presentation 'Building Tomorrow's World | The Emerging Principles of Twenty First Century Design' shown at the Sustainable Design Network Seminar 2009 at Loughborough University, held on 12th June 2009, can now see it on Slideshare above.

Creativity's Role in Environmental Messaging

Putting The We In Web Media Ecology Conference 2009

View more documents from Societás.

Societás' presentation 'Putting the 'We' in Web | Creativity's Role in Creating Collaborative Web 2.0 Platforms and Environmental Digital Messaging' shown at the Media Ecology & Postindustrial Production Conference 2009, held at the Innovation Forum at University of Salford on 3rd November.

The Dandelion Awards

The Sustained Dandelion Award recognises the extraordinary contribution of grassroots social enterprises, companies and individuals in creating a truly positive impact and are thus sowing the seeds for a more sustainable society.

Award categories include Food & Garden, Community & Events, Well Being & Fashion and Home & Prosperity. Previous winners include Howies, Suma, Sustrans, Patagonia, WasteWatch, 
Frank Water, The Eden Project, , The Big Lemon Bus and The Youth Food Movement.

Nominations are currently being accepted for the Dandelion Award for Community & Events, which will be announced in January 2010. Apart from the beautiful sculpted award (pictured above being handed to winner Tom Druitt of The Big Lemon Bus by Melissa Sterry at UK Aware 2009) that will be presented at a public event, the winner will receive a full-page write-up on Sustained’s website and a free advert and online presence.

Sustained Dandelion Award Judging Panel 2009/10:

John Grant - Author of The Green Marketing Manifesto

Lea Simpson - Founder of Unchained

Helen Trevorrow - Owner of Green Row PR

Melissa Sterry - Founder of Societás

Jules Peck - Author of Citizen Renaissance

Marc De'ath - Founder of The Creative Coop

Sean Dagan Wood - Assistant Editor of Positive News


The latest Dandelion Award winner was The Youth Food Movement who won the Food & Garden Award '09. Help Sustained reward the hard work of those people at grassroots who are so often overlooked and make a nomination.

Societás joins InterACT

A selected number of media practitioners, including Societás, are to participate in a pilot participatory media forum called Inter.ACT. The forum is a research and development project exploring how social innovation and participation using digital media can create social, sustainable and enterprise benefits. Arts Council and National Lottery-funded, the forum, run by Catcher Media, will support and promote its members and kicks off with a residency at Poulstone Court in Herefordshire in December 2009.

Organisations and individuals participating in the forum will exchange knowledge, delivering learning, education and capacity building to facilitate better public service design and digital media solutions.

Enterprising Business Awards '09

The Enterprising Business Awards 2009 winners gathered on the evening of Thursday November 3rd for a celebration dinner to mark the end of the EBA Innovation & Entrepreneurship Postgraduate course they have just completed.

The award scheme is run by the WestFocus Entrepreneurship Centre based at Kingston University (above) and is designed to both bring the spotlight to and assist exciting young enterprises.

This year’s Enterprising Business Awards winners included sustainable fashion designer Kate Tailyour, Founder & CEO of vegan & ethical boutique Bourgeois Boheme Alicia Lai, Associate Director of Music Tank and Managing Director of Name Music Sam Shemtob and Founder & CEO of Societás Melissa Sterry.

Across the duration of the EBA course the winners’ skills in business finance, law, operations, marketing and team building were honed to assist them to build their businesses. Kate, Alicia, Sam, Melissa and the rest of the class of '09 will join the Enterprising Business Awards Network and Kingston University Alumni.

Prohibition Culture Report

The Future Laboratory’s LS:N Global Lifestyle News Network is releasing its latest insights report titled ‘Prohibition Culture’, exploring the fact that, to quote the report ‘everywhere you look, behaviour is being curbed, controlled, nudged and monitored. The ‘war on waste’ is creating a stealth tax that covers everything from the food we eat to how we should live, look and engage with the brands we buy’.

Several academics and professionals contributed to the report including radical thinker Noam Chomsky, Jeremy Laurance of The Independent, Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein - the authors of Nudge, Magnus Blair - Global Planning Director at New York-based advertising agency Anomaly, Mat Hunter - former partner at design and innovation firm IDEO, Professor Anders Sandberg of Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, Ed Gillespie - Creative Director and Co-Founder of Futerra and Melissa Sterry - Founder & CEO of Societás.

The report explores emerging trends, including new social norms, quoting Chris Sanderson, co-founder of The Future Laboratory ‘We have just had a decade of consensus culture, in which excess was encouraged at all levels, from spending to binge drinking to luxury at its most vulgar.’ Jeremy Laurance of The Independent was quoted stating ‘As the juggernaut of rising obesity rates rolls towards us, we will come to view the fast-food industry in much the same way that we view the tobacco industry today.’

The report also highlights the potential of closed loop systems stating ‘The UK produces 100m tonnes of food and other organic waste every year, according to Environment Secretary Hilary Benn; if this were converted to biofuel, it would power more than 2m homes’.

The Prohibition Culture report illuminates some of the emerging trends that we can expect to grow in 2010, including the bottled water backlash ‘Plastic bags and bottled water are major wastes of resources. The production of plastic water bottles accounts for 2.5% of the world’s oil consumption, according to ethical enterprise Tap. After the backlash against plastic bags has come the bottled water backlash. Sales of bottled water are down 9% in the UK this year, after more than three decade of year-on-year growth.'

On 2nd December The Future Laboratory will host a panel debate relating to its Prohibition Culture report with panelists including Ed Gillespie of Futerra and Melissa Sterry of Societás.

Media Ecology & Postindustrial Production Conference '09

Speakers gathered from around the world for the inaugural Media Ecologies & Postindustrial Production Conference, held on 3rd November at the Innovation Forum at University of Salford (above). Funded by the Annual Disbursement Fund, Dr.Phoebe Moore organised the event with Michel Bauwens from Dhurakij Pundit University and Nathan Cravens of the P2P Research Group.

The conference speakers and delegates included both practitioners and academics who are committed to Media Ecology, a contemporary term that refers to the relationships and interactions between people online and media environments, and their relationships to the political and social contexts where global poverty and climate change are our biggest concerns. These spaces include fab labs, crowd-sourced democracy systems, mutualist monetary systems, open manufacturing and other concrete ideas for community building through the use of technology. The radical ideas of the Media Ecologies community have already begun to impact ideas for sustainable development and new practical platforms for production. The activities of this event are linked to the Global Justice Movement to develop and implement a viable alternative to neoliberalism (and in time, exchange trade economics) by applying commons based peer production more diligently, as a market neutral open source web based coordination platform.

The keynote speakers were Matthew Fuller of Goldsmiths University (author of Media Ecologies, materialist energies in art and technoculture, MIT Press), and Michel Bauwens of Dhurakij Pundit University (Founder of the P2P Foundation) - both highly influential scholars in the research area of Media Ecology. These two researchers discussed the emergence and proliferation of a new form of production and value creation: peer production, where communities of volunteers and waged producers work to create (free) software/hardware and/or (open) content accessible to everyone. Within peer production, producers create products within a ‘commons’ or shared space, which can be used and modified by others who then return the product, thus improved, to the common pool. Producers often operate as a cooperative ecology between communities as well as the companies that create market-based spin-offs from that same commons.

The presentations developed a relationship between political, economic, and organisational questions posed by the P2P Foundation and the experimental cultural and philosophical drives, which underscore a lot of the work in the rapidly developing Media Ecologies field. Academics and practitioners who gave presentations included Sam Rose & Paul Hartzog of Flows, Smári McCarthy of Fab Labs, Dr. Eddie Kirkby of Manchester Fab Labs and University of Salford Visiting Fellow and Societás Founder & CEO Melissa Sterry.

The conference also marked the launch of the Peer to Peer Research Group, which is a new international knowledge hub for leaders in media ecology and post industrial production. Plans are underway for further seminars and workshops to discuss how the production techniques coming out of media ecologies offer the potential for real change in late capitalism.

Tck Tck Tck

Well done to BenBen for his new film for the Tck Tck Tck campaign. We've got a sneaky feeling an award or two may be coming his way for this one - it certainly gets our vote for most edgy short film on climate change of 2009!