Stormzy's stab-proof vest up for major design award

Stormzy tears up Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage in 2019

Stormzy's stab-proof vest, which he wore whilst headlining Glastonbury Festival last year, has been nominated for a major design award.

The Banksy design was donned by the grime star to highlight structural racism.

The winner of the Beazley Designs of the Year prize will be announced by London's Design Museum next month.

Also in the running is a house created for the Oscar-winning South Korean class war thriller Parasite.

Lee Ha Jun based the entire scheme for the fictional home of the wealthy Parks family on one simple sketch from the film's director Bong Joon Ho.

The technology used to take years off Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci in Martin Scorsese's mobster movie The Irishman is in contention too.

"I thought it was really good," De Niro told the BBC last year. "I always joke I can gain 30 more years in my career."

Meanwhile, UK collage artist Cold War Steve's Hellscape Jigsaw also made the cut.

The artist, who last year made the cover of Time Magazine with his satirical take on Brexit, tweeted to say he was "thrilled (and somewhat aghast to be honest)" to be nominated.⁦

'Cultural moment'

In June 2019, Stormzy made history by becoming the first-ever black British solo act to top the bill at the Worthy Farm event.

Wearing the stab-proof Union Jack vest, he used his set to bring attention to inequality in the justice system and the arts.

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The eye-catching vest was created by the famously anonymous artist Banksy from a former police issue garment.

The organisers of the new exhibition said it was "a defining cultural moment".

The rapper's famous Union Jack stab-proof vest will go on display at the Design Museum

Several months after his big gig, Stormzy told Q Magazine that technical issues had made it the "most difficult thing" he had done.

"Then after calming down for an hour," he added, "Some of the people at the festival - Emily Eavis and that - gave us a memory stick to watch it back. And I got about halfway through and I was, like, 'I think it all went alright'."

The design prize features 74 nominations across six categories - architecture, digital, fashion, graphics, product and transport.

Also in contention are the sound design for the award-winning TV drama Chernobyl, and a virtual library aimed at evading censorship in the computer game Minecraft.

A Chinese hospital built in 12 days at the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic is recognised on the longlist; as well as the vegan Impossible Burger 2.0; and The Renegade - a dance choreographed by the then 14-year-old Jalaiah Harmon, which went viral on the social media platform TikTok.

The exhibition opens at the Design Museum in London on Wednesday 21 October and runs until 28 March 2021, with an overall winner being announced on 26 November (there are also winners for each of the categories).

Last year the overall prize was won by Anatomy of an AI System by Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler.

At a glance - some other designs nominated for the Beazley prize include:

• Bon Iver's album artwork, created alongside the American indie-folk band's latest album, I, I

• Lego's toy block to teach braille to blind and visually impaired people

• Nike's record-breaking-yet-controversial hi-tech Vaporfly running shoe, as worn by Eliud Kipchoge when he became the first athlete to run a marathon in under two hours in 2019

• Plasters for different skin tones

• An edible drinks capsule made from seaweed, used in the London Marathon to cut down on plastic waste

• A DIY meal kit for growing gourmet mini steaks from human cells

• Mexico/US border wall see-saws, designed to allow neighbouring children to play with one another on each side

• A graphic of coronavirus commissioned by health authorities in the US to raise awareness of the pandemic

• A suitcase created from second-hand shoes

• A self-sanitising door handle

• The brick arches developed by pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong to slow down police vehicles.

• A school which can be quickly erected and dismantled in response to forced evictions of farming communities in India.