Following the footsteps of their award-winning alumni community, students at LASALLE College of the Arts are evolving into the next generation of globally engaged artists, designers and leaders.
With the choice to pursue a diverse array of diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate programmes across a comprehensive range of disciplines including visual arts, performing arts, design, film and animation and arts management, LASALLE students are pushing the boundaries of their practice.
And with early exposure to industry collaborations and an international curriculum that’s infused with a global consciousness, LASALLE students are actively shaping all areas of the creative industries.
From design thinking to design doing
From a young age, LASALLE BA (Hons) Design Communication graduate Lee Jing Lin experienced immense fulfilment when her creations came to fruition. It was this desire that led her to study design at university.
Armed with aspirations and artistic talent, she came to LASALLE to challenge herself and left with the 2017 Award for Academic Excellence.
“During my time at LASALLE, there was a motto that I chose to live by, ‘Go big or go home’. It wasn’t about trying to go big for the sake of gaining fame. I challenged myself to set ambitious goals, and this empowered me to divert my energy and give my all towards my education,” she said.
But the stream of awards didn’t end there for Jing Lin. She was soon shortlisted as a Top Three Finalist for Young Art Director of the Year at the 2018 Creative Circle Awards (GONG), the Oscars of the Singapore advertising industry.
And in 2019, she won two Wood Pencils at the prestigious D&AD Awards – one for her Nike Hypercourt campaign and the other for her work on the publication VIRUS: Nice To Meet You.
“During my final year, I had the privilege of being nominated by the school to attend a speed chat at the IAS Career Fair. This speed chat landed me my first full-time job at the advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH)!”
The designer is now venturing into entrepreneurship, leading a start-up called Kopi Date, a service that connects strangers over coffee at unique spaces in Singapore.
“LASALLE has definitely opened doors for me as a creative,” Jing Lin said.
Where creativity crosses borders
Another LASALLE student who has made a name for herself in the creative sector is Theatre Production and Management graduate Tan Qian Yan.
During her studies at LASALLE, she had multiple opportunities to apply what she learned in lectures by working with people from other programmes within campus as well as with industry professionals, both local and international.
“This allowed me to be able to keep up-to-date with creative sector trends and industry practices,” says Qian Yan.
Throughout her time in LASALLE, she was continuously given complex roles and increasingly intense productions.
“This took me out of my comfort zone and a couple of times, pushed me to my limits. But thanks to that, it allowed me to go much further than I thought I would be capable of and allowed me to grow both as a person and a professional,” she adds.
With a collection of LASALLE production credits such as stage manager and show caller for A Requiem For Change (2018) and stage manager for Pinter Triple Bill (2018), Qian Yan got to take her passion for stage management from Singapore to Sheffield, UK.
“The opportunity to do my internship at Sheffield Theatres was possibly the best experience of my academic journey in LASALLE. The most transformative aspect was having to be truly independent in a foreign environment, which I had never had the chance to do before,” she said.
“Being exposed to a completely different work environment taught me to be adaptive and fluid with every oncoming challenge I encountered through the period of time I worked there.”
Where inspiration lasts a lifetime
BA (Hons) Film student GurJeevaan Singh may be young, but he’s already producing films with impact.
A fresh filmmaker who enjoys telling stories that have the power to bring people together, GurJeevaan hopes to create narrative feature films that tell dramatic tales and successfully raise awareness about Sikh history and culture in Singapore and India.
Only in his final year at LASALLE, his film Come Here has already been nominated for Best Direction, Best Actor and Best Actress awards at the Cine65 Film Festival in 2019 and nominated at Frameworks Film Festival in the same year.
Grateful for the College’s support throughout his achievements, GurJeevan believes that without LASALLE, he would not have gotten the many opportunities that inspired and spurred him to take his film career forward.
“LASALLE was a great starting point in my filmmaking journey. I was an engineer before and I was worried about how I would fit in compared to others who had previous experience.
“But the biggest contributors to my creative growth are my lecturers. They give me space to learn and improve, while encouraging me to take risks,” he says.
With so many talented students and alumni, it’s fair to say that success starts at LASALLE.
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