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| Sheffield College, Hillsborough |
I took part in the
4 E's (Entrepreneurship, Education and European Exchange) project by
Erasmus, which included a one week workshop in Sheffield, UK.
There were two set decorator/ scenographer students and two
goldsmith artisan students (Tarja and I) from the
Tyrvää college of crafts and design, in Sastamala, Finland and three
Arts and crafts course instructor students, one Stained glass artisan student, one Glass jewellery artisan student and one interior decoration textile student from Ikata (Ikaalinen college of crafts and design) in Ikaalinen.
Other schools that took part in the workshop were Sheffield College in Sheffield, UK (that's where we were headed) and Liceo Artistico di Porta Romana from Florence, Italy.
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| Me, Rumesh and Caterina gardening. |
Once we had arrived to the Sheffield College we were divided into groups of 3 to 5 people, with participants from all three countries. We were sent off to carry out an exercise, where we were supposed to take pictures with a tablet of the members of our group doing things like "Your group's Finnish student looking freezing cold outside the new built cafe on a bench" , "3 'green-fingered' team members gardening outside by the horticultural department" or "selfie of the entire team outside the main entrance".
It was a great way for us to get to know each other and learn the places at the same time.
The people in my team (the Cookie Crew!) were Brits Yasmin and Rumesh and Caterina from Italy.
After this we headed off on a field trip. We were originally supposed to
visit the Graves Gallery, but since it was monday, the gallery was
closed and we went to the Winter Garden and the Millennium Gallery
instead. There was on display the collection by
John Ruskin and the 'Metalwork in Sheffield' exhibition.
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| Quartzes from the collection by John Ruskin. |
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| Commedia dell' Arte inspired ring by Chiara Bet . |
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| Fitting our prototype. |
On tuesday we began our workshop. The given theme was a 'bicycle
accessory' which was supposed to solve a real life problem.
Mark Phillips from the Sheffield Hallam University (
Design Futures) had visited us the previous day and given us a lecture about designing a product.
My team decided to design an all-inclusive saddle cover, with a pouch for keeping small things in it and tail lights on the back. The problems we wanted to solve were: comfort, visibility and storage space.
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| My Brits, Yasmin and Rumesh. |
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| We scanned Caterina's drawing at the school library. |
We wanted the customer to be able to customize the fabric, so Yasmin and I were supposed to go and print a small piece of fabric using a drawing Caterina had made, but the scanner that was necessary for this procedure was unfortunately broken, so we decided to go to the school library instead and just print some samples on paper.
On wednesday we went on a field trip to
Chatsworth and David Mellor's
Design museum. I won't write more about it here, but you can see pictures from the trip on my other blog post, written in finnish,
here.
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| Traffic lights, designed by David Mellor. |
After the trip we drove back to the school and in the evening we attended on 'Stars on Starting Out' lecture, with lecturers
Victoria Claire Dawes and
Kate Malone. They spoke about their careers and starting a business on an artistic area of work.
On thursday we continued with the workshop.
Our group added to our idea of the saddle cover the new, fabulous and innovative uv-light.
The black light was supposed to point towards the cyclists back, where one could spray patterns with an uv-spray, only visible under black light.
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| Our presentation. Caterina, Yasmin, Rumesh and I. |
We also had another lecturer,
Paul Chamberlain, from the Sheffield Hallam University, also talking about designing a product.
In the evening my team mates and I perfected our presentation via facebook messenger so that we could get everything ready for the next day.
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| Our design with my drawing in the middle. |
The presentation went okay. I forgot my english entirely, when it came my turn to speak, but it could have been worse.
After the presentations we were offered scones (
/skəʊn/) and tea, the english way.
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| Andy shows us how to properly drink tea. |
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| Me, looking like a weather girl. |
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| The farewell dinner. |
In the evening we attended on a farewell dinner with the italians and a couple of Brits, as well.
Learning about designing a product widened my perspective and thoughts and the company was excellent. It was also instructive to work with people from different cultures. So, on the whole, I'm really happy for the experience.
