Edventure: Week 3 Blog
Written and photographed by student – Matthew Anderson
Monday 18th September
Our third week of the ‘Start Up’ course got off to a quick start on Monday morning with a ‘Power Dynamics’ workshop, in which we were set a task by Amelia to individually come up with ideas and designs for a building space in Frome. We began this task by individually coming up with our own ideas for what this project space could potentially be used for. Following this, we each shared our own ideas with the group, all of which were unique, but some with similar themes. The next stage was refining the ideas and themes down into one main category, that eventually being a project space used as a communal place for artists to meet, to work on their own individual projects, and also potentially collaborate. We decided that it could also be a place in which musical equipment could be donated and stored, and with the private, individual rooms upstairs to host film editing workshops, and music production/band practice or recording sessions.
Towards the end of our brainstorming session, this week’s team leader of the group, Valentine, presented this collaboration of our ideas. The main aim of this task Amelia set for us was to bring awareness to how we engage with one another as a team in terms of social influence and leadership.
The afternoon of Monday, following a delicious lunchtime soup made for the team by Ben, involved further brainstorming, this time however, with the week’s challenge brief in mind, which was to communicate our ideas for making Frome’s SHARE shop financially sustainable in a presentation we would be giving on Thursday afternoon to the shop’s managers and our course Start-Up lead facilitator, Johannes. We began sharing and brainstorming our insights related to what we found from the research data we had collected from the previous week. For example, one common insight we had was that the shop’s storage system needs rethinking, due to the current excess of items in storage.
Tuesday 19th September
Tuesday morning began with a talk given to the team by business expert and former investment banker, Gavin Eddy, in which he shared some very useful business advice with us in regards to our team’s aim of making SHARE financially sustainable…
Around lunchtime, two members of our team, Ben and Ruby, took part in an interview on Frome FM to talk about our team’s mission to financially empower SHARE as a community enterprise…
The afternoon’s main activity back at Edventure was, with some of the insights we had previously brainstormed in mind, to come up with ideas and potential solutions of how we could address some of SHARE’s current challenges. In doing this, we also had certain criteria in mind, including “Viability/practicality in time frame”, “Workload on SHARE team”, “Likelihood of increased financial returns”, and “Likelihood of making a difference in the community”…
Wednesday 20th September
Since Wednesday was our main day to organise and prepare material for the group presentation the following day, it’s fair to say that we were bracing ourselves for what we knew was going to be a long, mentally intense day. Not only did we have to formulate five key questions from our insights, but also to develop and add to our existing ideas we had for each insight/question. Initially, we decided to start by organising our insights into five main categories – “Message”, “Membership”, “Systems”, “Items & Appearance”, and “Atmosphere”…
Following this, we used another board to come up with questions for our insights, along with a ‘quick wins’ section, which included certain insights that were common in our research we did the previous week, and concerning issues that needed addressing, i.e. the fact that, generally speaking, people don’t value ‘free stuff’ as much as that which has a financial value attached to it.
Soon after, we had come up with our first question – “How might we make people who love the concept of SHARE use it?”
By the end of the day, and with some of us staying on for an hour extra, we had finally come up with and organised a series of five insights, questions and ideas for Thursday’s presentation. Though many of us were quite exhausted with information overload by that point, we were satisfied with what we had achieved for the day, and knew that we would be going into Thursday morning on a good footing in preparation for the afternoon’s presentation.
Thursday 21st September
We had most of the morning on Thursday to prepare for the afternoon’s 1pm presentation at the SHARE shop, and in the three hours or so we had to prepare, we spent much of the time sorting through each insight, question and idea, and trying to decide on what the best way would be for us to present…
Thursday afternoon’s main focus was on our group presentation, given to the SHARE shop managers and our course lead/facilitator, Johannes. Our group manager/facilitator for the week, Valentine (left), along with Miranda (top centre), began the presentation introducing the team’s main aim for the week, and that we would be presenting some ideas we had come up with.
Following this introduction, each of us individually spoke on the different areas/categories we had each volunteered to talk about, and overall we presented some very good ideas for potential development. Feedback from both managers and Johannes was received at the end of the presentation, and the expansion of certain ideas will be a focus point for next week. Considering the limited time we had to prepare, we gave a strong presentation of ideas and potential solutions to some of SHARE’s current challenges.