These two or three days offer you an opportunity to polish up your design skills in the company of your peers. It is intended to help anyone just starting out learning design and those following the Diploma, at any stage between induction and close to accreditation. Come to learn, share, make new friends and to be inspired! The core of this event will be to provide you with the feedback you need to become a better designer by taking you though a full design process. Either bring a design that you'd like to finish or come & start one afresh at the venue.

The former option can be achieved in two days, whereas the three day event gives enough time for starting a design from scratch. In addition bring two or three of your 'design projects-in-progress' (if you have them) for evaluation and we will assist you in gaining new insights and understanding. These projects can be at any stage; ideally bring one or two fairly well developed designs and maybe another started, but perhaps a bit stuck. No particular standard is expected, the Diploma is all about supporting us to become better designers and we all have to start somewhere. If we can help you, at whatever level, then you're just who we're looking for!

For those doing the Diploma, design support often takes the form of a two or three hour long one-to-one tutorial. Sometimes this is the most effective means of helping an apprentice with their design work. However, my own experience has shown me that more often than not, this isn't enough time to really provide the support that is needed. This is an especially important issue when only one or two design support tutorials are taken during the whole learning pathway. There is a risk that an apprentice can accumulate ten designs only to find that they have been missing out some important elements all along, and this is not as unusual as you might think! A longer event such as this allows more time for issues to be identified and insights to be found. Learning with fellow apprentice designers also enables additional ideas and experience to be shared. 

In addition to our feedback, you will also have the opportunity to gain extra ideas and inspiration from your peers. By taking another detailed look at the design process, we'll remind you of anything you've forgotten and fill in any details that may have been overlooked on your design course (this is not as uncommon as we would hope).

If you are well into your Diploma pathway, you'll be looking ahead to accrediting. If you are just started, it's helpful to know where you're heading. For that reason we'll also examine the criteria and the process that leads up to this and to reassure you that it's a lot less scary than you might think!

At the end of it all, you will leave with inspiration, a new peer support network (friends!) another design for your portfolio and a set of useful digital resources to help keep your designing on track.

 

"Many thanks for a fantastic weekend, I really feel fired up to get stuck in"