One Page Summary

The aim of the Open Up to Design project is familiarising 12 participants, foster care alumni (15 people will be recruited, including 3 on a standby list), with the art of design narrowed down to upcycling. As part of a program for becoming independent, the offer targets people between 18 and 25. Participants will do an internship at ReStore under the watchful eye of craftsmen/professionals/designers. The course is carried out in the form of workshops, lasting a total of 144 hours, the internships lasting 56 hours. The total course will take 200 hours. During the course under the eye of designers from Beza Projekt, instructors and practicians, the participants will be working individually or in groups of 2-3 on designs of functional/decorative items using upcycling. Materials such as cardboard papers from furniture packaging and other used objects acquired by ReStore. The Habitat for Humanity Foundation (Habitat) will become the owner of the designs which will be implemented for production and sold for social purposes. Course participants will visit known studios, factories, workshops in Warsaw. Thanks to that they will get to know production processes, with machines needed to manufacture various materials/products.
Innovation responds to existing gaps in the area of professional activation, diagnosing needs and predispositions of foster care alumni leaving institutions. Solutions in terms of helping those foster care alumni who came of age to become independent nowadays comes down to mainly ad-hoc financial help kept at a minimal level which doesn’t assure safe conditions for development to young people. There is especially a lack of tools ensuring comprehensive support to a foster care alumni who’s become independent. Upon leaving care they are at risk of homelessness, unemployment, clashing with the law. Among the group are sensitive people with artistic predispositions. It is they that our proposal is aimed at. The Warsaw Family (WCPR), our partner in the project, is a local government institution coordinating the activities of institutions/foster families in Warsaw and supporting foster care alumni. To join the process of becoming independent, it is necessary to designate a caregiver for living independently and signing an individual programme of becoming independent. Our project will be an element of that programme. We provide practical bases of design, up-cycling, materials science, prototyping, production and client relations to participants. The workshops enable first independent steps in becoming a designer. The most talented will be given the opportunity of working towards that goal and/or getting ready for higher level instruction.
Habitat, besides contacts with people who potentially might cooperate within the scope of ReStore, will have ready designs for serial production made from materials available at the charity store. The quality of designs will be assured by high level instructors who will collaborate with participants throughout the designing process: from the creation of the prototype. At the end of the course we plan to organise at ReStore an “Open Up to Design Day”: participants will present to a large audience the results of their work in the form of an exhibition and workshops, describing all stages of product creation. Their peers will also be invited, who, thanks to this may be inspired by the art of design. Representatives of designer circles as well as students, lecturers of the Fine Arts Academy, ReStore clients, lovers of applied art and journalist will also be present at the event. There is a lot of competition in Warsaw in terms of design. Studios often hire skilled interns, young and talented employees. There isn’t a design studio which directs its cooperation offer in the form of internship or collaboration to that particular group whose artistic potential often remains undiscovered, underdeveloped and unused on the market. Art requires internal discipline, determination in pursuing one’s goal and patience. These are personality traits that participants will have a chance to develop. These might translate into other areas of life, strengthen their way of communicating, break internal barriers created most often by difficult conditions of upbringing. The ecological element of the project connected with the activity of ReStore and circular economy will also prove to be innovative.