Edinburgh College Events Management students are holding an exhibition focusing on the paranormal history of Edinburgh . tomorrow. The free exhibition – ‘The E Files’ – will tell spooky stories about the city’s supernatural and terror-filled past. Continue reading Ghosts of Christmas Past: Spooky goings-on at Edinburgh College
College students demonstrated their sporting prowess at the inaugural College Sports Festival held at Edinburgh College, aimed at encouraging college students to participate in sport during their studies. The event, hosted by Scottish Student Sport (SSS), saw around 250 students taking part in a variety of sports including football, basketball, touch rugby, touchtennis, volleyball and ultimate frisbee. Continue reading College Sports Festival encourages students into sport
Scotland’s Women’s National Football Team swapped football boots for aprons when they attended a workshop on cooking and nutrition at the Edinburgh College campus on Granton Waterfront ahead of their appearance at UEFA Women’s Euro 2017. Continue reading Scotland Women prepare for Euro 2017 with nutrition workshop at Edinburgh College
Edinburgh arts patron Professor Richard Demarco has opened an exhibition of his work charting his collaboration with German legend Joseph Beuys, at Edinburgh College. The project aims to benefit art and design students at the college by giving them insight into the collaborative processes between top artists.
Continue reading Demarco exhibition opens at Granton Campus
Budding young chefs have cooked up a treat for their school head teachers at Edinburgh College, learning in a real restaurant environment as part of a scheme to bridge school, college, university and work. Continue reading Academies students cook up a treat for school teachers
Students bring all the fun of the Christmas fair to Edinburgh College
Edinburgh College students are spreading festive cheer by organising Christmas fairs at the college’s Granton and Sighthill campuses – and are inviting local craftspeople, staff and students to take a stall. Continue reading All the fun of the fair
Cookery students help make Aldi opening event taste great
Edinburgh College Professional Cookery students gave customers at the new Aldi store in Tranent a taste of the skills they have picked up on their course at the shop’s opening day event.
The students braved the cold October weather to prepare tasters of recipes they had prepared using Aldi products. Customers were delighted to sample butternut squash soup, chocolate tarts, tandoori salmon with naan bread, and beef tagliata, and snapped up recipe cards to use at home.
The students demonstrated their preparation techniques when dishing the recipes and walked around the store to serve tasters to customers. This is the second store opening the students have attended, following the opening of the Cowdenbeath store last month, and gave them great practical experience and the chance to engage directly with customers and hear their positive feedback.
The five students are all studying SVQ Level 2 Professional Cookery at the college. Their course prepares them for working in the professional cookery industry by pairing training in food preparation and restaurant service. Students use these skills working in the college’s Granton Campus canteen and the two training restaurants, The Apprentice and eh15.
Student Kerry Robertson said: “This has been a really great opportunity to work and show off what we’ve learned on our course. I don’t have a job in the catering industry yet, so events like these give me the experience I need to take to future employers. I’ve been serving the samples to the customers today and had some really nice comments.”
Lecturers Chris Cockburn and George Baker accompanied the students. George said “We’re really grateful to Aldi for giving us the opportunity to help out with their store opening. It’s valuable for us as a college and for the students, as it lets people know just how high quality our students and teaching are.”
Pictured: Professional Cookery students James Baigan, Alastair MacKay, Alannah Ramsay, Douglas McGovern and Kerry Robertson outside the new Aldi store.
Edinburgh College Rapunzels have let down their hair for a good cause and donated their locks to make wigs for child cancer patients who have lost theirs.
Students from HN Sport Therapy and Fitness, Health and Exercise courses joined their lecturers to have the chop to help children’s charity the Little Princess Trust, which makes wigs for children undergoing chemotherapy.
Lecturers Laura Craig and Louise Ball, Louise’s sister Denise Farrell, and five students went under the scissors to donate at least eight inches of their hair each. Altogether, they gave two metres of hair to the charity.
Laura Craig said: “Donating their hair was a scary thing for most of my students because they have had long hair all of their lives. I think everyone looks great with their new haircuts, especially Louise, whose hair hasn’t been this short since she was a teenager. We are now trying to raise money to help pay for the wigs to be made.”
Students from the Level 3 Hairdressing course provided the haircuts under the watchful eye of their lecturer Rosemary Martin, and also styled the newly shorn hair at the Granton Campus training salons. This follows a great run of community engagement by hair and beauty students last year, which included last year’s Level 3 students helping George Watson’s College pupils with their own Little Princess Trust donations.
Each Little Princess Trust wig costs £350 to make, and the charity relies on donations to help make these. To make a donation in support, visit Laura’s fundraising page www.justgiving.com/laura-craig4 or the Little Princess Trust.
Pictured:
(Top) Edinburgh College lecturer Louise Ball and her sister Denise Farrell show off their donations.
Hairdressing students Gillian Muir (right) and Amy Lothian (left) gave haircuts to sports and fitness students Kelsie Boyle and Shannon Leishmann (centre).
Graphics students learn from the best in new Edinburgh College design partnership
Some of the city’s top design agencies have teamed up with Edinburgh College to show students the inner workings of the industry and help them become the next professional stars.
Six design agencies have signed up to a new partnership scheme with the college to give graphic design students industry experience and insight while they are still studying. Mentors from the agencies will coach students over the next year, giving them work placements, setting them briefs and advising on projects including work for real clients.
The agencies – Whitespace; Blonde; Teviot; Union Direct; Equator; and LEWIS – will in turn get access to the best graduates, working with them to ensure their skills and knowledge meet the needs of the industry and support its growth.
The new partnership builds on the success of the HND Visual Communication: Graphic Design course’s existing mentorship programme, which has been pairing students with mentors for the last seven years and now works with 13 agencies. The six agencies now signed up as official partners will provide further opportunities over and above mentoring so students can experience all sides of the industry, as well as sponsoring the students’ end-of-year show.
The project launched with an event at the college’s Granton Campus, where students got to meet their mentors for the first time.
Graphic design lecturer Helena Good said: “Bringing the design agencies on board as partners will be great for the students as it gives them new ways of getting the knowledge about the industry that they’ll need when they enter the workplace. Having access to professionals working to incredibly high standards in the latest practices, including digital, and getting their honest feedback and guidance is invaluable to their development.
“The mentoring project we started seven years ago has really taken off, and we’re lucky to have so many great companies so keen to be involved. Formalising these partnerships is a natural step and really embeds this project and the students themselves firmly within the city’s design community.”
As well as allotted time with mentors throughout the year, some partners will provide up to a month’s worth of work experience placements. They will also each set groups of students one-day ‘guerilla’ design projects, where mentors will turn up unannounced in the morning and set a design challenge to be completed in a day. Mentors also help students work on intensive one-week design projects working on real briefs from real clients, which in previous years have included Innis & Gunn, Edinburgh Zoo and GF Smith.
One of the mentors at partner Teviot, Kirsten Murray, who studied the HND at the college and graduated in 2007, said: “Whatever stage you are at in your education or career, having a mentor to support you, challenge you and ask you hard questions is invaluable. I have watched the mentoring programme go from strength to strength over the last five years. The success of the programme is clear when you see the quality of the ideas and the design work being produced by the students.
“As a former student of Edinburgh College, it means a lot to me to be able to give something back to the very place that kick started my career in design. The future of design in Scotland will soon be in the hands of these students. That’s why it’s so important that we help them to become industry-ready graduates.”
Student Alex De Sousa, 18, from Bonnyrigg, said: “This doesn’t happen anywhere else and it’s really exciting. It’s incredible that we get to spend time one to one with people with such great experience and it’s such a good opportunity.”
Gillian Grant, an account director at LEWIS, said: “The more you work with and get to know the students the more you can see that they are hungry to learn in all areas. There’s lots they can learn from an account management and project management perspective to complement the creative side and help them understand all sides of the industry. You can offer process-driven advice and recommendations on pitching, and demonstrate how all areas of an agency work together to achieve a goal.”
Cold juice sells like hot cakes!
Edinburgh College lecturer Alan Laing set his Access to Care students a fundraising challenge: take this £20 and make a profit for charity. The seven students proved to be well up to the task and earlier this week presented Cancer Research UK with a cheque for £270!
Incredibly, the students raised the money in just four hours! Showing true entrepreneurial spirit, the students bought cakes, snacks and soft drinks at discount prices and sold them on to fellow students at a healthy profit. Lord Sugar himself would surely have been impressed!
The soft drinks in particular were an inspired idea – the day of the sale proved to be one of the hottest of the year so far and the juice ‘flew off the shelves’.
Enterprising students Sophie, Kerry-Anne, Jackie and Niamh are pictured with College Principal Annette Bruton, course lecturer Alan Laing and Cancer Research shop volunteer Elaine Lennon,who accepted the cheque on behalf of the charity.
Fellow fundrasing students Connor, Fraser and Lorraine couldn’t attend the cheque presentation – maybe away pitching an idea or making a few quid on a market stall somewhere!
