One Great Workshop

Taking place during Sheffield Design Week and a part the two-year project Stories of Change, which is attempting to revive conversations around energy by looking at the topic in new ways, One Great Workshop was a vibrant event, chock full of fascinating questions and tales that took place at Bloc Studios.

Students from Sheffield University Technical College were invited to participate in telling the story of the future of energy and industry in the region, responding to prompts and job roles drawn at random from a pack of cards. With careers ranging from factory supervisor to robot to designer and much more, students responded to the scenario event cards with creativity and intelligence.

Their tale of the region resulted in heritage craft museums on the river, renewable energy sources being tapped, and a conglomeration of automated factories leading to the creation of a robot utopia in Chesterfield – the result of a long speculation over the future of mechanisation and automation. A second group foretold the rise of the technical college to meet the increased demand for skilled workers in the technology-saturated times to come. Some intriguing conversations and ideas, and wonderful to see such engagement from young people over what their future could look like.

Concurrently and with the same attitude of questioning and considering, photographer Tim Mitchell gave a crash course in digital photography whilst running his Question Cloud Photo Booth. Inviting participants to ask questions about energy issues and explore them in a visual manner, the photo booth provided a fun way into some thought provoking questions, as well as encouraging people to open up to the topic. Responding to their visual cues quickly and thoughtfully, special mention has to go to the “Have we evolved to depend on power?” question shot in front of the Charles Darwin street art by Rocket01.