“We find collaborating with education enormously important. This stimulates and feeds us with surprising ideas and inspiration. In the cooperation with SintLucas, meaningful creativity really appeals to us.”
Design a business gift made of ceramics, glass, leather or textile that suits a recreational area of Leisurelands. With this question, students from the Creative Craftsmen course in glass, leather, ceramics and textiles set to work. Leisurelands asked them to design a business gift that would fit in with the overall experience of their organisation. A nice assignment in which students can use their creative talent to work on a meaningful assignment from the field.
Leisurelands
Leisurelands is the operator of several recreational areas in the eastern Netherlands, based on the combination of nature and recreation to make recreation accessible to every population group. Leisurelands wants people to get out of the door and experience again and again how beautiful, fun and active you can recreate in the outskirts of the Netherlands.
Client assignment
“The request from the client to design and make a business gift fits in well with our Creative Craftsman course. During the second learning year, students always work on a real client assignment so the timing was perfect,” says Janneke Binnendijk, business contact from SintLucas. “With a client assignment, together with the client, we work out the question in a briefing for students. With this briefing, the students can then get to work in a targeted way.”
After the briefing, the students started working on the assignment. During this phase, students create several (sketchy) designs. These designs are assessed by fellow students and, based on this, the students choose a final design which they develop for the client. Janneke: “The Creative Craftsman programme includes several workshops, namely: glass, leather, ceramics and textile. For this assignment, the aim was for students to combine two workshops. For example, one student chose the combination of leather and ceramics and another student chose glass and textiles.”
Collaboration
Adriaan van der Linden, Development Manager at Leisurelands “We have worked together with SintLucas before from the Spatial Design course and that produced great results. It is valuable that the collaboration has been followed up with the Creative Craftsman course. We find the cooperation with education enormously important. It stimulates and feeds us with surprising ideas and inspiration. In the cooperation with SintLucas, meaningful creativity really appeals to us.”
Interim presentation
After a few weeks, the interim presentation took place where the client was also present to provide the students with feedback. Adriaan: “During the interim presentation, our expectations were exceeded. What the students can come up with, design and make with the various materials is really amazing. For us, it was difficult to assess beforehand what to expect, but what we saw was really beyond expectations.”
Excitement
Students were given time until the final presentation to incorporate feedback from the interim presentation. During the final presentation, students presented their final product to the client and Adriaan, together with Kees Rutten, director of Leisurelands, chose a product from each studio. This was of course very exciting for the students, as it the chosen products were purchased by Leisurelands and used as promotional gifts. Adriaan: “The chosen products stood out in terms of creativity and interpretation of the assignment.” Adriaan and Kees eventually chose: a checkerboard with checkers made of ceramic, a decorative bowl made of felt and glass, a poncho made of textile and leather and a photo stand made of glass and ceramic.
Decorative bowl
Student Creative craftsman glass Noa Schoondermark designed the decorative bowl for Leisurelands. Noa: “For my bowl, I combined glass with textiles. I took a felting course a few years ago and the techniques I learned there have always stayed with me. For this commission, I thought it would be nice to use this technique again to represent contrast between the hard, shiny of glass and the soft of felt.” The glass in the bowl symbolises Leisurelands’ lakes and the felt around the bowl symbolises nature. The bowl can be used both functionally and decoratively.
Noa: “The fusing and melting techniques I used for the glass piece were quite new to me. I got to work doing different tests to create the marble effect. This worked out quite well in the end. I built up the felt from several layers. By wetting the felt with warm water and through soap friction, the fibres come together and you get the desired effect.”
“I couldn’t believe it”
“When I was told that my product had been chosen I was very surprised myself and couldn’t believe it right away. I am really honoured to have been given this opportunity and super excited to have created something I really like.
In addition to Noa’s decorative bowl, Leisurelands also chose the following promotional gifts:
- A glass photo frame with ceramic coaster in the shape of a recreation area made by Koos van Hoof
- A textile poncho made by Sophie Metselaar
- A leather checkerboard with checkers made of ceramic made by Maeve van Leuken & Tarah Langenberg