We were invited down by Inspire; a charity bringing creative businesses into local schools to get kids excited about fun jobs they can do when they’re older.

We wanted to our session to be a creative workshop so we challenged the kids to craft a cool homepage concept for a new product or a re-design of their favourite sports club site, TV show or fashion store.

‘I wanna be the boss!’
To give them a taste of a real life digital studio set up, we put the year tens in groups – giving them a specific role to play from art director to designer, project manager, interactive producer and copywriter. They used the school PCs for research but because we love the whole hand built digital thing – we got them to create their final presentations using good old fashioned cutting, pasting and doodling. They also had to come up with a name and a logo for their site and consider how to make it exciting interactively.

‘Into the Dragon’s Den’
We set up the challenge in the first workshop and then left the kids for a couple of weeks to work up their ideas. When we went back, we got them to present their ideas just like a real life pitch situation. And we were amazed at the standard and how commercially savvy and brand aware they were. The X-Factor generation also clearly have no problems standing up and performing – one team had even produced a special rap for it!

Judgment Time …
The kids’ pitches are currently being judged by the whole rehab team and the winning group will get their concept mocked and put online by our digital designers.

The best bit about hanging out with the kids for Anna and Christophe?

“Being called ‘Miss’ and ‘Sir’
And just being blown away by how creative and switched on they were.”

http://www.inspire-ebp.org.uk/

We have joined forces with Lulu Kennedy’s Fashion East to launch the rehabstudio Design Award – building an ongoing platform for supporting and nurturing new design talent.

Lulu Kennedy, Tim Rodgers, Natascha Stolle, Pablo Flack

Launched by the Old Truman Brewery as a philanthropic project in 2000, Fashion East has become synonymous with creative freedom, effervescent talent and fun runway shows. rehabstudio is an independent design studio based in Shoreditch and Belfast, working with the music, media and fashion industries. As a demonstration of both companies’ commitment to emerging talent, this new creative award offers one of Lulu Kennedy’s fashion designers the chance to have a brand new web site created by us free of charge.

With this career-enhancing opportunity, the winning designer will get to showcase their work at its best, communicating online with both their customers and the media in a design-forward, commercially successful way.

The rehabstudio Design Award (DA)

Today, we have revealed the winning designer as Natascha Stolle, who will now get to work with us over the next six weeks at our Shoreditch studio. Natascha turned to fashion in 1999, gaining a placement as assistant to Peter Jensen, who she remained with for nearly 10 seasons. In February 2008, after graduating from Central St Martin’s School’s MA course, she was snapped up by Fashion East founder Lulu Kennedy, and in September 2008, her debut SS09 collection was showcased at London Fashion Week.
View the site here – www.nataschastolle.com