Note from Seema
MORE ABOUT HOW THIS TRAINING COURSE CAME TO LIFE
Hi
I have spent over a year's time with the local schools and helping textile teachers who were struggling for resources in the class room, though it started more for fun, as time went on I realised that TEXTILES TECHONOLOGY is so under resourced in everything, you are expected to achieve fashion college standards and there is no training available to suit the needs of a textile teacher.
I was quite surprised at the GCSE students trying to recreate a current fashion trend, and the poor teachers were struggling to help the girls with the results they wanted to achieve. I felt that I could easily share my knowledge and expertise and help the teachers with some resources.
I have had over 10 years of experience of working with mass production to small sample runs, and have worked in India, Nepal & China. These are major garment manufacturing countries who use the latest technology available in the market today.
The fashion/garment industry spends 30% of its budget to train people, and professionals every year, and it's a huge massive task. The UK government and the examination boards are expecting this level of industry understanding for GCSE students which personally I think is absolutely stupid, if they can't provide the training needed, how do they expect teachers to deliver?
Any way I happen to meet EBP(education business partnership) project manager, and when I mentioned the idea of training, Suffolk EBP jumped at the opportunity and the next thing was we had a full audience of textile teachers who booked for the workshop, the day was a success and all the teachers wanted to do a follow up course at the end of the term, which really encouraged me to launch this training course.
It is one thing to share my knowledge and its completely a different thing when you have to go back and teach in a class room, to help you with that I have developed the video resources which you can subscribe and students can access via school intranet.
The training workshops will be held every year, hopefully in the same place and venue, and every year we will move one step further in learning new techniques and ideas. Explore the exciting new things that are happening in the fashion world.
One other advantage is, its great to meet and interact with other teachers, feel and work with real textured fabrics, and just get excited about the whole day and the kind of designs you can create, doing the sort of stuff you wish to do without 20 students all around you .....
I love to teach and train, my team in India all came from different background, and every one had to be trained from scratch, the seamstresses i have only knew how to run a sewing machine, and now they finish the couture dresses to the highest standards.
Designing is not just about how it looks on the outside, very similar to how important it is to have a good personality and not just a pretty face to get on in life, the life of a design is not in the sketching, but in its construction and what goes inside a garmet actually makes it... it would be exciting to share it with you all...
Please feel free to E-mail me if you wish to know more
Look forward to seeing you at the training workshop
Seema