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At Edinburgh College of Art, Mark Aitken is hoping to create an icon of furniture design with a dining chair that extends so that there’s always room for an extra course. The design is as controversial as it is practical.

“I wanted to make a social statement, something beyond the functionality of a chair,” he says. “Obesity struck me as something everybody could relate to. I thought about creating something that grew bigger, to accommodate more of a person.”

Aitken has yet to test his design on the public. He is nervous about the reaction, but essentially he’s designed a chair that answers the question: does my bum look big in this? “I’m going to take the chair out and get it used by obese people and find out how they react to it,” he says. “The next step is to try to sell the chair, but I need to be confident that people don’t think it’s gimmicky. Let’s be honest, there’s a gap in the market for a growing portion of the population. Why make everything bigger? If you are of average size, why would you want to buy furniture that’s way too big?”

Aitken’s social awareness reflects how, in recent years, degree shows have restyled themselves for the changing times as competition grows stiffer and the real world creeps into the concerns of the contemporary art and design scene.

“Degree shows used to be very self-referencing. It used to be all about personal expression,” says Stuart MacDonald, head of Gray’s School of Art at Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University. “Today’s students are casting their vision wider and bringing the outside world into dialogue with their own work. They are working with outside bodies and arts organisations long before they leave college.”

Gray’s School of Art sculpture student Merlyn Riggs is taking her art out of the classroom and into the public domain. She was invited by the Scottish Women’s Convention to exhibit three of her degree show artworks at the Scottish parliament.

The trio on display includes The Main Ingredient, for which 200 participants were asked to personalise a cheesecake recipe, make the dessert, photograph it and send the image to Riggs. What practical use this can have is open to debate, but Riggs is part of a generation keen to explode the myth of the dispassionate artist. After all, she has a living to make.

“Today’s young artists are engaging with the outside world in a different way to their predecessors,” says MacDonald. “I think it makes them much more fit for life outside the art school.”

Degree shows: Edinburgh College of Art, June 14-24; Glasgow School of Art, June 14-21; Gray’s School of Art, June 14-21; to see work from the Duncan of Jordanstone degree show, visit www.dundee.ac.uk

Best of the rest

School of Textiles and Design degree show, Heriot-Watt University, Borders campus, Galashiels, June 24-28

Formerly the Scottish College of Textiles, this school dates back to 1883. Every year it selects students to exhibit at the prestigious New Designers event in London, which is attended by leading members of the fashion industry. The school is at the cutting edge of research, with ongoing projects in textiles, design, fashion, clothing and colour science.

Cardonald College year-end student showcases, Glasgow, June 6-12

Cardonald hosts annual on-campus exhibitions of students’ work in graphic design, applied arts, textiles, design and technology, and jewellery. Its Cardonald Rocks fashion show at the Old Fruitmarket, Candleriggs (7.30pm tomorrow night), is one of the most popular of all student fashion shows; many Cardonald students progress to the big art colleges to pursue their catwalk ambitions.

Glasgow Metropolitan College Showcase 08, June 2-6

Glasgow Metropolitan College runs courses in design, printing, ceramics, photography, multimedia, fine art and product design, and its annual student exhibition reflects this range. Many of the Met’s students go on to further study at the UK’s established art schools.

Moray College degree show, Elgin, Moray, June 6 and June 9-14

Moray’s BA (Hons) Fine Art degree course has been running for seven years. The exhibition features seven students who can easily hold their own with their peers graduating from the other four institutions that offer fine art degrees in Scotland. This year, sculptor Georgina Porteous has created a giant inflatable foetus — a fountainesque tunnel to an underbelly world. Matthew O’Connor draws detailed aircraft with pastels, rendering their hard, implacable metallic surfaces in the softest of media.

Adam Smith College end-of-term exhibition, Kirkcaldy, Fife, June 21-24

Students on the college’s creative industry courses in furniture, interior design, graphic design and animation display their best work. On June 4, the college’s fashion show takes place at Rothes Halls, Glenrothes, featuring more than 130 outfits designed in response to the themes of rebellion, utopia, silhouette, monochromatic, “tubed” and contradiction.

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