COMMUNITY BASED EDUCATION and PRODUCT DESIGN

I have been serving as the Lead Initiator of The DEEP Project Initiative and our works have always been orientated towards helping people and communities see the correlations between what they have as resources and how developed they can be with the same resources. This we do by showing them the connection that exists between formal education and vocational skills based on how they complement one another.

This was what prompted the design and making of an alternative product to the conventional stool or seat. We intend to teach youths and students in unreached and underserved communities how to create value from the resources that are already abundant within their environment. We want to help communities create global values (finished products) from there local values (raw materials).

With all these in mind we came up with the idea to design something green and aesthetic; portraying elegance and expediency of resources. So we decided to use scrap tubes that are normally set ablaze thereby causing harm to the atmosphere.

MATERIALS
 Scrap Tubes
 Yards of Woolly sheet
 Spherical/Circular shaped Wood
 Foam/Cushion
 Pieces of shredded Clothes

• The Scrap Tubes are for the body and the lower part of the product; a pair is joined together to form a tubular or cylindrical stand.

• The spherical/circular shaped wood serves as the upper part of and the cover for tubular stand. It is the sitting area.

• The wood was however covered with shredded clothes and later wrapped with the foam/cushion before being well glued to the tubular stand. Everything was later covered with the woolly material for cosmetic appearance.

This process is what we have termed as The DEEP Design and the name of this particular product is called Tube Seat.

We are ready to take The DEEP Design further into development of indigenous and ingenious products by working with Communities in helping them turn their resources into finished products. We want to take them through the process of DEEP Design and educate them how to create values independently i.e. without any external influence or input.

Skills like this are what we are poised to teaching youths and students in unreached and underserved communities in order to foster sustainability by helping them to make use of the mundane resources that lie untapped and unused within their environment.

Image Credits: MY PERSONAL ARCHIVE

#recycle #community #africa #nigeria #education #creativity #design #art #technology #green