2021/22 scholarship students

In addition to a cash prize, each scholar is receiving a tailored package of support to help them develop their talent during the year. For some this will be one-to-one tuition or mentoring, for others it will involve covering the cost of music exam fees or purchasing specialist equipment. During the year, each scholar's work will be showcased in some way, whether that be an event on campus, presenting their work online or some other opportunity. If you have an event that you would be interested in one of our scholar's taking part in then please contact us by emailing luarts@lboro.ac.uk.  

You can find out more about our 2021/22 scholarship winners below.

Itseme has been writing for as long as she can remember, with her fondest memories of writing being in high school when her classmates took turns reading stories she had written in a notebook. She has continued to write since then and recently put out her debut novel - 'Party Of One', after years of hoping to do it. She hopes to put out more books in the nearest future.

In her spare time, Itseme writes several stories, estimating them at largely over a 100. She considers it the most important outlet through which she expresses herself. She runs a newsletter community called 'Letters from I' where she frequently sends out her short stories. Her stories range from thriller to romance to comedy and more, wanting to try her hand at every genre.

When she’s not writing, she’s consuming a bucket load of fiction. She one day hopes that her stories are converted into movies.

Molly first started singing when she was 8 years old when she joined Cantabile Youth Choir and had weekly singing tuition. She is Grade 8 standard and thoroughly enjoys expressing different characters, emotions and languages through her voice. Molly takse any opportunity to sing, and has competed both nationally and internationally, for example participating in ‘The Choir of the Year’ competition, ‘The International Eisteddfod at Llangollen’ and ‘The North Wales Choral’ competitions. She has regularly entered local competitions at annual festivals such as Leicester, Burton-on-Trent, Leamington Spa and Lichfield where she has enjoyed participating against others and receiving positive and constructive feedback.

Molly is a Grade 8 flautist and has achieved highly at piano, having been members of several musical organisations. She has been a member of an orchestra at each school she has attended as well as the Leicestershire County Wind Band for 2 years, after having to audition, travelling abroad to Italy with them for a Summer Tour as well as attending regular concerts.

Since studying at Loughborough University, Molly has been a member of LSU Sing and LSU Classical, joining regular rehearsals, where she enjoys the spirit of sharing and learning from each other’s talents. Her passion now as a scholar is to participate in any opportunity given to her as well as enjoying additional formal training to help her further develop and improve her vocals.

Elizabeth grew up with her head in a book, hiding paperbacks under her bedsheets with a torch when the lights went off. As a child she didn’t realise she could cross the boundary from reader to writer, so it wasn’t until the last few years when her attention turned to writing, initially prose but then poetry, the medium she now enjoys most. She finds the emotive value of poetry extremely powerful, allowing us as people to understand ourselves and each other, and wishes to achieve this feeling in her own writing.

In 2020, Elizabeth began pursuing publication for her writing and has since had numerous works in online journals, magazines, and anthologies under her penname 'Elizabeth Sallow'. She dreams of pursuing publication and hopes one day she can hold her own paperback, maybe this time not under the bedsheets with a torch, but proudly with the big light on.

Emi started writing songs in 2018 during her adolescence as an outlet for a whirlwind of thoughts and feelings. Along with her guitar, she developed a lot of her style and songs in her room.

As a queer artist, Emi found that there was not a lot of music that related to her situation. She states that it made her feel surprisingly alone and describes that one of her motivations for writing and producing music is for some people to relate to it, and everyone to enjoy it.

"As much as I love music written by men about women they love, I found that when I too had these feelings, there was not a lot of music that was written by women that I related to."

Emi’s music is inspired by popular artists from the 70s and 80s, such as Elton John, Billy Joel, and John Denver, as well as newer acoustic and indie-rock music such as Boy Pablo and Tom Rosenthal.

Since coming to uni, she has performed at regular open mic nights and continues to work on producing her songs and building her social media profile.

Follow her progress @emigrovermusic on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.

Muren was a layman of painting that became a strong motive for him to explore a substitute method, a cool method of artistic image expression, which was photography. He has only been in love with photography for the last couple of years. However, this short period has provided him with precious opportunities to re-perceive the outer and inner world and lay a solid foundation for his aesthetic concept and arts expression in the future. Through the viewfinder of the camera, Muren, who has mild depression, can seek a temporary peace and deliver a special interpretation of the views in the context of global pandemic. Muren tries to focus on the beams of light through the windows and pillars of ancient cathedrals, seek the glow from layers of mountains and waves below the cliff. He tries to explore an expression to combine his 16-year experience of piano playing with modern photography.

Before moving to the UK, Muren was awarded as a member of Xuzhou Branch, China Photographers Association. At the end of 2020, Muren passed the assessment and became a contracted photographer of a major Chinese commercial image platform (www.huitu.com) and a candidate photographer of the greatest Chinese visual platform Visual China Group (500px.com). There is still a long way for him to explore; within the next two years, Muren plans to apply for the member of provincial organization of China Photographers Association, design a portfolio of World-class scenic spots in Europe and initiate a project about landscape and humanity art in Tibet, western China.

Growing up in Bermuda, living on a very small island inherently meant there weren’t a lot of hobby or special interest shops. As a kid who loved a lot of big pop culture properties like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars, I learned pretty quickly that if I wanted my own wand or sword or lightsaber, I was going to have to build it myself. Being the very geeky kid I was, I absolutely did want my own version of whatever prop I saw on screen in films, tv and games. So I started to learn to build things with my hands, and reproduce what I saw using whatever I had on hand.  

I have been involved in theatre on and off stage for the last 10 years. So naturally, as I got older, I began to find an overlap of my interests and help with designing and making props for the shows I was in.  

The thing I most connect with about prop making is the way that you can make an inanimate object tell its own story by the way you design it and weather it to make it visually have its own history. Each bit of paint or scratch you add is a different event in that props life that gives it its character. 

My interest in making encouraged me to discover higher Design and Technology at IB, and although studying a business-related degree here at Loughborough, I have been involved in a number of online Design competitions placing in the top few places in contests focused on Jewellery making, Sculpting, Prop Making and 3D Printing.  

I hope to use this year to focus more on developing my prop making portfolio with the possibility of looking to study/work more in the field in the future. 

Charlie has been playing the piano since he was seven and is excited to get back to piano tuition with the help of the LU Arts Scholarship, after an inevitable break during COVID.

Music has always been an integral part of his life and he believes that the communal experience of rehearsing and performing in countless orchestras, bands and ensembles has been key to his musical development and enjoyment. Over the years, Charlie has enjoyed providing piano accompaniment for local choirs, as well as playing the violin or clarinet in many bands and orchestras, such as the North Wales Youth Orchestra.

Charlie has developed his technical ability on these instruments by working through the ABRSM graded exams, most recently completing his grade 7 on the clarinet. He has achieved distinction at grade 7 piano and hopes to complete his grade 8 this academic year, with the support of the LU Arts Scholarship.

Charlie has also taken time to arrange and compose his own music. He especially enjoys writing expressive ‘programme music’, and has had a composition shortlisted in the BBC Young Composers Competition.

Since joining Loughborough University, Charlie has been rehearsing with the Tuxedo Swing band and LSU Classical orchestra and is looking forward to taking part in concerts and recitals in the near future.

At the age of 11, Sarah watched the Abraham Darby school band perform and was inspired to play an instrument. She gained grade 5 in clarinet, saxophone and singing, and participated in many of the school bands. Whilst in the Abraham Darby Showband she performed at the Birmingham Symphony Hall, the Royal festival hall and the Royal Albert Hall in London and participated in the International wind band festival in Carnegie Hall in New York winning the gold award. She also attended Telford stage school, was in school productions of Grease as Teen Angel and Bugsy Malone as Tallulah and finished college with A levels in dance, music, and theatre studies.

After deciding not to pursue music as a career she worked in a variety of different jobs before starting the Foundation in Science and Engineering course as a mature student at Loughborough University. Some musical activities that she took part in after finishing college include being a backing vocalist in a ‘Pink’ tribute band, playing clarinet for the band of the Mercian Regiment and being a part of the LSU sing society.

During the coronavirus lockdowns, she started to play clarinet again and recently joined the LSU classical society. She has also been doing singing lessons with the ambition of completing her grade 8 musical theatre exam next year. Sarah gets so much joy from music and hopes that the scholarship will help her to build up her confidence and give her more opportunities to perform.

Yirene is from Malaysia and is in her second year studying Business Analytics. She started her street dance journey four years ago and was in multiple dance crews throughout the years including the only hip-hop urban dance crew based in Nottingham.

Yirene started her dance journey with ballet from the age of 6 till 10, but lost interest in the dance soon after as she felt that ballet was rigid and only allows people to express in a certain form. When Yirene was in high school, she realized there is another world to dance - street dance, which is not as popular and well recognised as other dance styles such as Jazz, Ballet and Contemporary where they have accreditations through exams. Yirene is passionate about street dance as it represents freedom, openness, and acceptance where everyone forms a community as street dance originated from the streets in Bronx, USA where the old generations created street dance legacies. Street dance is a broad umbrella and includes breakdancing, hip hop, popping, locking, house, urban choreography and so much more.

Last year, Yirene was selected into AU Dance advanced hip-hop team and this year, she became the coach for AU dance hip hop novice team, mentoring them to be confident dancers to perform at the university’s annual dance showcases. Yirene hopes to widen people’s perspective of street dance through her personal story and experience in taking street dance lessons in Asia where she came from. Yirene would love to contribute towards creating a dance culture fusion into Loughborough University dance scene. Through the arts scholarship and support, Yirene looks forward to taking classes from famous choreographers to enhance her dance skills.