Month: September 2019

Sealife Centre

We decided to visit Sealife Centre on our final day in Birmingham, while we drove up late on Wednesday night, and I spent all of Thursday in the Enactus training, we had some hours on Friday after checking out before we had to get going, so we walked five minutes over to the building.

Penguin display

I loved the penguins and all the different ways you could view them as you walked around their enclosure, and the fact you could see them swimming under the water too. They were clearly used to contact and were happy to put on a show when you were watching them which I loved. I think penguins and sealife could be translated into patterns for particularly young children as I feel like it could be very attractive to them.

Fish tanks

I loved the variety of fish and sealife on show, I feel like any of these could make really interesting patterns for children but also by creating them in my more patternwork style, like the shark in a previous post I did, I think these could be quite classy and make for a nice pattern for young adults as well.

Texture

I loved the range of texture I found within the tanks and habitats of the animals, the corals in particular were very pretty and I also found the lights in the tanks made really unusual colour combinations. This could be used to create an interesting background to the patterns and also blenders.

Crabs, Shrimps and Piranhas

I thought the more ugly or feared creatures could be something interesting to look into, crabs to me remind me of spiders which I do not like, although I am getting braver with handling them when I go crabbing. I could imagine an interesting pattern with crabs, especially as they can be very colourful and textured as well. The piranhas as well are given a bad and dangerous name, however I think they are very interesting looking creatures with the large teeth, but otherwise are quite normal looking fish. Again this could be an interesting collection showing off some of the weirder species that the sea has to offer.

Jellyfish

Jellyfish I think are capivating, they are so unique and weird and have this floaty weightless look about them. They can also be very brightly coloured and would make for a lovely pattern that I think could be used throughout a range of interior or stationary products, I think it is a very versatile design.

The 360 degree tunnel

I loved the 360 degree view tunnel, the sea creatures were completel surrounding us and there was such a variety in there. The old turtle in particular was beautiful, and I loved seeing the sharks as well.

Overall it was a really good visit and very useful for research whether I decide to go this way or not, I have ideas for things I could do in my future.

Enactus Responsible Leader Accelerator

With my position as secretary of the Enactus society, I was asked to attend the Responsible Leader Accelerator training in Birmingham in September. This was the first time I had done something like this, or travelled so far by myself, so this was something I was quite nervous about. To help with my anxiety with the situation, my boyfriend booked a hotel, allowing us to go to Birmingham the night before, so in the morning I got ready and ate breakfast and then walked five minutes to the HSBC bank building where it was being held.

Booking into the event and getting started

We were signed up and shown to a lift that took us to the third floor, where again we were taken to various tables to collect our timetables for the day and then to a table where we were given some free things to help us with the day, such as notebooks, pens and chocolates, as well as some information on jobs in HSBC, which is a lot more than working in a bank I realised.

Welcome Talk

We began in a lecture theatre for a welcome talk, introducing us to the main members of the Enactus team who were there, some key people in HSBC as well as some of the other partner companies that were attending to be teaching workshops or giving talks.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car workshop

The first activity in my day was with Enterprise Rent-A-car, it involved an interactive session on business management, we were put into small groups and asked to imagine we were running one of the branches of enterprise, in charge of the dealership. We basically had to plan out our whole day, including assigning cars to customers and getting them to and from the cars at the right time, as well as answering customer queries and balance the work between the team of drivers. However, the phone would ring and problems would occur, firstly one of the drivers phoned in sick, which meant the remaining driver had a lot more to do in the day, which meant making some decisions, such as offering a better car or a discount if people had to be made late for whatever reason. While the other two members of my team worked on the timetable for the driver, I flicked to the back and thought I could get on with some of the customer queries as I thought we may run out of time to complete these if I left it any later. It was simple things like taking discounts for customers and pricing up other jobs, which actually provided us with a little more information to do with the car types that we could give to certain customers as well.

Overall we did well, it was interesting to hear how other groups handled the same queries too.

Afternoon Session

After a lunch break where I returned to the hotel quickly to eat, we were sent to the next session, I chose a panel discussion as there were six different people there talking so I thought I could learn quite a lot from this.

They talked about their business and personal lives and how they have overcome issues to build more resilience, which was very informative.

The whole lecture theatre returned and we were all split off into large groups, where we discussed what three qualities in a person and ourselves we think are most important to develop our future careers. I decided for myself as an art student that creativity was definitely one of the highest for me, as I do not think it just applies for creatives but in any industry in terms of problem solving and many other issues. Each group then did a short presentation on which word they chose, I immediately noticed how some of these people who had been to events like this before and working with Enactus societies for a couple of years were so charismatic and confident with public speaking, I felt like I was in front of a business man on the Apprentice, which is something I would love to be able to do myself.

I returned to the hotel and made some notes about the day, I was looking forward to the next day too, as we were so close to the Sealife Centre in Birmingham, we had this planned as I was considering fish and sealife for my module still.

Welcome Crew Week

During fresher’s week at Uni, I signed up to assist as a member of the welcome crew to help ease first years into uni life and show them around if they need anything. The training day was quite successful, I was nervous about the aspect of working in Cyncoed campus, somewhere I am not familar with being based at Llandaff. The first week started, I was placed at Cyncoed with a few others, in the main reception as this seemed to be the place where most people were walking through trying to find lecture halls or rooms, or coming to seek advice if they needed it by the main reception desk. The Izone is hidden down a corridor in Cyncoed however it is in the main reception at Llandaff, so some people had to be directed down there and others just wanted a general direction of where their rooms were.

Being new to Cyncoed with just my Ipad as a map, it actually took less time than I thought to get familiar with the blocks and buildings, knowing as well that we were working as a team, we managed to cover all the buildings between us and take people for small tours if they wanted to know more of the campus. The first two days were quite busy with helping out people, although Tuesday afternoon definitely got quieter as time went on, so the freshers fayre taking place on the Wednesday was something to look forward too.

On the Wednesday I also helped out on the Enactus stall, showing first years and others what the society had to offer. The fayre as a whole was successful and the welcome crew assisted with the setting up of the stalls and chairs, and also handing out the bags to freshers. The bags contained flyers and discount coupons and general information for new people in Cardiff, and these bags were being handed out in the hundreds. As an extra shift we were offered to join and complete the bag packing, around 15 different flyers to be put into each bag, this took around seven hours to fill all the bags needed to in the Centro bar in Cyncoed the Saturday before the fayre.

Bag Packing

We started with a method of packing by passing the single bag around and everyone adding a flyer or two, I went to the end of the line and I thought packing these back into the boxes would be quite an important part to ensure they were easy to access on the day, so this is mainly what I did for the morning, until we switched up the style of packing and instead created piles of the leaflets which were all put into the bag together, speeding up the process by quite a bit.

Thursday again was a quiet day as most of the people who were starting Uni had started on Monday or Tuesday and knew which rooms to attend now, I spent some time handing out leaflets to promote metfest the following day, and then we were instructed to help up up some decorations around the campus.

Adding Colour to Campus

The flags were added around most of the buildings where the events of Metfest were going to take place, the Zen bar was a key area, so we worked on using the streamers to create displays throughout. This was quite a fun day as it related more to creativity, although before the shift even begun I found people approaching me asking for rooms as late as this in the week.

Metfest came around and seemed to be a busy and active day, we were just positioned to welcome people to the various areas, I spent my time outside of the management building, where one of the main events seemed to be the cocktail making classes and the circus performers who were teaching students how to do some of the tricks.

Overall the week was a fun and interesting one, it was also the chance to get to know other people throughout the University and other courses, as well as some of the main members of the SU. This also helped me greatly towards my Cardiff Met Award hours of work which I was happy about, especially with it being work within the University.

Putting together a hamper for Enactus

As a part of the committee for the Enactus society, we were given some jobs over summer working towards the freshers fayre, these were:

  • Collect gifts for the hamper to give away to a lucky winner out of the people who sign up at the freshers fayre
  • Make a spreadsheet including questions for the sign ups to answer as well as providing their details for contact
  • Edit dates and times onto the posters to tell everyone where and when the welcome meetings will take place
Collections I managed to get by asking local businesses

I was first told to get in touch with someone at Enactus which could provide me with contact details for some of the partner companies with Enactus, such as Asda, Unilever and Bic. This turned out to not be possible, I sent a few emails anyway but I did not receive replies for a long time. I instead decided to try some of the local businesses near my house, this is something I have never done before and I was a little nervous, although after the first few places I got my ‘script’ straight in my head, to inform them exactly what I want for what, but not ramble on and bore them. The first few places were not successful, but not for negative reasons, a cupcake place close by simply said they get such a lot of requests that they have to limit themselves to a monthly charity budget and the September one had already been reached. As I continued down the road, I stopped being so picky with what I thought I wanted in terms of products, and just tried going into most places and seeing what they could offer me. This resulted in vouchers and bar tabs in a few places, but I also wanted to get some physical items that could fill an actual hamper. Pictured above are a few things I got from my first trip down the road and back, I was surprised that most stores were trying to be very helpful, such as hairdressers giving out free haircuts, a sports store giving some free tennis balls and even a corner store giving some sweet treats.

I tried co-op and was asked to provide the request in writing, so I did that that night and took it back the next day, they then gave a large amount of party food, such as some posh crisps, chocolates and drinks. I also had success in a sports and protein store, where I got a selection of protein based bars and snacks, as well as a water bottle and a shaker, which is a very good prize considering a lot of Cyncoed campus is based around sports.

The completed hamper

I was very happy with the collection, I think in the end the value of the basket was around 200 pound, including over 80 pound in vouchers. It was ready to go for the freshers fayre.

The freshers fayre

The freshers fayre was quite successful, we managed to get a good number of people to sign up and a lot of people interested in the community forest project which was great to see.

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