Pasifika graduate blends design and dance passions
massey-university
Fri May 28 2010 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Pasifika graduate blends design and dance passions
Friday, 28 May 2010, 11:04 am
Press Release: Massey University
Pasifika graduate blends design and dance passions
Five years ago Phoebe Smith chose design as a career path ahead of hip hop dancing but the new College of Creative Arts graduate is now successfully combining her passions.
Ms Smith, 22, says it was a Massey University Secondary School Bursary won in her final year at college that set her career path.
“I’ve always loved design and when I got a Massey bursary it nudged me to pursue a design career over my other passion – dancing.”
The Wellington East Girls’ College head girl of 2005 graduated today with a Bachelor of Design.
She is doing an internship as an art director at Saatchi and Saatchi in Wellington and keeping up her dance interests. “I’m also teaching hip hop classes and dancing and choreographing for an all girls hip hop crew Infinite – it’s ridiculously busy.”
She had successes throughout the four-year degree. In 2008 she won a New Zealand Post Student Marketer of the Year Award when she and fellow student Nicole Yeoman were given a brief from the Vodafone Warriors rugby league club to develop a marketing programme aimed at improving primary school literacy. To show reading was fun they devised a folder containing collectible cards featuring short stories about different Warriors players.
The same year she also received a Pacific Islands Scholarship from Massey to help her with her studies.
Last year she won a Zonta Visual Communications Design Award and, in November, gave the opening address followed by a hip hop performance she both choreographed and performed in, to launch the University’s annual creative arts festival Blow.
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As part of her degree major project Ms Smith was able to combined her talents again and explored the concept of exercise advertising with a "flash mob" performance she choreographed, which targets Air New Zealand. It was performed in the arrival gangway at Wellington airport. A flash mob is when a group of people appear to spontaneously perform before quickly dispersing. “It was quite a lot of fun, if the opportunity comes up I would use a flash mob again, if it was right for the intended audience.” The video clip can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnWFfMnO8zU
Tomorrow she will join with 11 other graduates from the Wellington campus at a ceremony to celebrate Pasifika academic success. Ms Smith is Samoan; other graduates are from the Cook Islands, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Tokelau and Tonga. They have received qualifications ranging across the spectrum of what the University offers: Business, business information systems, construction, design, engineering technology, exercise science, fashion design and technology, health science, nursing and public health.
Over the past six weeks, 105 new Pasifika graduates have received qualifications from the University’s five colleges and across three campuses and distance learning, 40 per cent at postgraduate level.
Pasifika Director Professor Sitaleki Finau says much has been achieved for Pacificans at Massey over the past decade including the development of the first University-wide Pasifika Strategy in 2005, a first of its kind for any New Zealand University. Professor Finau says graduation is a special time for students, their families and Massey staff. “It is the culmination and celebration of years of hard work, not only for the graduates, but their families, extended families, friends and communities.”
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