From running activities with mums and toddlers to the busy world of commerce, a thriving Northumberland business has found a new niche helping young entrepreneurs to develop their marketing strategy and products.
Lorna Watkinson who runs her unique business, Rainbow Pottery Painting from her home in Warkworth has teamed up with Bedlington charity, Leading Link to deliver enterprise workshops to junior schools in the county.
Lorna, a former advertising executive, is using her skills with pottery painting coupled with a unique creative concept to help the children identify a product that they can make and subsequently sell at a local market. Her successful “Business visioning workshops” have been specially adapted to fit in with lessons at the first school involved in the project, St Roberts First School in Morpeth.
The pottery painting sessions help the children to keep their vision for their business idea in sight and remember what they’re working towards. During the workshops, they are asked to think about the products that they would like to sell. They draw their designs on to a tile or a mug, which Lorna fires-up in the kiln to provide them with permanent visual reminders.
Lyn Horton from business, community and education charity, Leading Link was delighted at the way the youngsters took to Lorna’s workshop.
“ These are the entrepreneurs of the future and at such a young age they are already discussing ways to market their products and services to a wider audience than Morpeth weekly market. Lorna really has a way with the children that grabs their attention and captures their enthusiasm.”
The children will visit Morpeth Market soon to get more ideas about promoting their products before taking over a stall themselves. Ideas generated by the children with Lorna’s help include T-shirts with Morpeth clock tower design, decorated sweets, clock tower snow globes and painted canvasses.
Lorna was pleased to see that her work with the children had led to some good marketable ideas and a real enthusiasm for business and entrepreneurship.
“My sessions offer the children real value and much more than simply decorating a piece of pottery,” she said. “They are a way of experimenting with ideas, testing the reaction of their peers and having a lot of fun creating their own products. It’s a complete learning experience for the youngsters.”
As the pilot workshop was such a success, it will now be cascaded out to other First and Primary schools with a final enterprise challenge between schools taking place later in the year.
Rainbow Pottery Painting can be found at http://www.rainbowpotterypainting.co.uk