"Designing the Real World" Community Design Studio

Aim

Our Community Design Studio will provide space and support for disadvantaged young people to create design solutions to everyday problems

"Designing the Real World"

  Community Design Studio

What do we want to do?

We want to give young people in Great Yarmouth the opportunity to identify and articulate the challenges they face in everyday life, and help them develop and design their own solutions to them. 

Why? What's the problem?

Great Yarmouth is a challenging place to be a young person. With some of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the UK it offers few accessible opportunities and pathways to stimulate young people’s enthusiasm and aspirations. Over the past few years the level of art and design provision offered in schools has also been steadily decreasing, meaning that those who are more creatively than academically motivated are underserved throughout their education, and thus disadvantaged when it comes to choosing and accessing relevant careers (there is also concern about a future skills gap in applied creative innovation, not only in the creative industries but across all professions).

Our solution:

We want to run Community Design Workshops led by Art and Design professionals, passing on their experience to help inspire young people to create innovative design solutions in response to real world issues and situations. We have run similar workshops before so we know that they work. Here are some images of previous workshops:

The impact:

It is well documented that giving young people the resources and opportunity to make their own decisions and take control over aspects of their lives can help give them confidence, improve their mental well-being, and develop their creative thinking.

What we need:

£5,000 would allow us to deliver a one-year long programme working with up to twelve young people from local schools. We already have the promise of £2,500 from The Ranworth Trust (who support registered charities in East Norfolk involved in care and education in the community), so we need to find the other £2,500 through our Crowdfunder Campaign. Anything extra would allow our project to continue into the future and support more young people.

What the money will be spent on:

The funding will support a year long programme of workshops with up to twelve 14-18 year olds. It will pay for:

• experts in the Art and Design industry to come and work with the young people
• materials
• refreshments
• promotional material
• transport
• a showcase exhibition
• a final publication documenting the whole project.

Our resources (what we bring to the table):

We have experience, skills and contacts - We have delivered design workshops for young people in the past, using a 'meanwhile space' and working with Creative Collisions (artist educators working with Time & Tide Museum of Great Yarmouth Life) on a project called 'Make Yarmouth'.

‘Make Yarmouth’ was a series of design modules with inspirational professionals that each set the scene, introducing and speaking on their subject and setting a design brief. Subjects included Wearable Technology, Architecture, Product Design, Graphic Design and Furniture. Following the success of these workshops, 'Make Yarmouth' has continued to run, and has now been going for almost 3 years. Here are some examples of the fantastic work made by the young people:

We have secured a great new space - we were previously working in a small shop unit which was adequate but quite limiting in scale.

We have just signed a lease on a space in Market Gates Shopping Centre in the centre of town, and plan to use this as a base to deliver the workshops. We have some basic tools but would like to expand the workshop so there are more opportunities for young people to try things out.

We have connections with local industries - we have previously worked with local business who are willing to provide off-cuts and by-products from their manufacturing so we can introduce ideas around recycling and circular economies (issues that are really important to us). They are also happy to give tours to the young people, showing them their production processes.

How we will recruit:

We will work with local organisations like ENJOY, the Local Cultural Education Partnership, that connects cultural organisations with schools to share activity and resources. They can help tell all the schools about our project and invite pupils to come along to it.

We will also work with MAP, an organisation that helps young people find their way in life, and the local Youth Offending Team, to help promote the project. The promotional material will also be translated into Portuguese, Lithuanian and Polish, the three main languages spoken in Great Yarmouth after English.

About us:

Our organisation is called originalprojects;. We’re a charity that delivers an artist-led collaborative programme in response to Great Yarmouth, engaging with the communities, industries and heritage to uncover, support, create and promote cultural experience, assets and enterprise.

Our mode of working explores a relationship between generosity, creativity and place, through exhibitions, workshops, public commissions, conferences, podcasts, a sonic arts festival and gastronomic events; all delivered in partnership with learning providers, other cultural organisations, community and voluntary sector and local businesses.

We are one of a handful of local organisations delivering artistic engagement to our local area, reaching a large and diverse demographic.

www.originalprojects.space

The title "Designing the Real World" is adapted from a book by Victor Papanek book called "Design for the real Word: Human Ecology and Social Change".

Thanks to Rebecca Osbourne for the illustrations to accompany our video. www.rebeccaosborne.co.uk

This project successfully funded on 7th October 2020