Last night, we popped over to the Creative Review launch to pick up our copy of their 2013 Annual, showcasing the best of international design. We are stoked with the news that our work for the RNLI is showcased in this year’s Annual. The success doesn’t stop there, the designs have also been included in the D&AD 2013 Annual and short listed in the Design Week Awards.

The recognition and coverage received can only help contribute to the continued commercial success of the range. Available in John Lewis and Lakeland the Attention All Shipping range generates revenue to support the selfless work that the RNLI crews do saving lives at sea.

Over and out!

Richard

The Glass Academy was launched by the British Glass Manufacturers’ Confederation to create industry-wide learning and development programmes across the glass industry. The Workshop has been commissioned for a number of projects with them, so we wanted to get to the heart of the industry and experience the environment for ourselves.

After donning the full uniform, we were able to experience the sights, smells, sounds and temperatures inside a factory.

We are looking forward to more factory visits and see the projects as a great window of opportunity for us…

We were proud to develop ‘The Great Pie and Peas Up’ campaign with St Luke’s Hospice, as part of their appeal to raise money for a new In Patient Unit. The unit will provide a comfortable and peaceful environment for patients and their families from all across Sheffield.

The campaign invites the people of Sheffield to host their own pie and peas themed party, asking their guests for donations. Who could resist the chance to eat pies and do some good at the same time?

We invited our lovely neighbours and friends to come along and indulge in delights such as steak and ale and chicken and mushroom. In the spirit of all things local, Sharrowvale butchers Roney’s provided the very tasty homemade pies. We passed around special bottles of Henderson’s bearing the Pies and Peas Up mark and gave our pies a good splashing of Sheffield’s finest sauce.

We finished off with big pots of Yorkshire tea and scrummy homemade cakes, along with tunes from local heroes Richard Hawley, Pulp and Arctic Monkeys (as well as that one song from Heaven 17).

We raised £273 and are proud to be among the 5,000 people sitting down to have pie and peas this March in aid of St Luke’s.

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As part of our ongoing commitment to the St Luke’s capital appeal, we worked together to develop ‘The Great Pie and Peas Up’ concept – a new fundraising campaign to raise money for the St Luke’s in-patient unit.

As the name suggests, St Luke’s is encouraging foodies, bakers and budding pie-makers all across Sheffield to get their hands floury and to run their own Pie and Peas event this March.

If you register your interest, you’ll get the pack we designed with everything you need to be a great Pie and Peas Up host: invitations, posters, bunting, balloons and a ready-made quiz printed on placemats. There’s also a recipe book with step-by-step instructions for making mouth-watering pies by some of Sheffield’s finest chefs. Plus we created a limited edition bottle label for Henderson’s relish, because pie just won’t cut it in Sheffield without a dab of Henderson’s!

Actor Richard Wilson, The Star and Thornbridge Brewery are all getting behind the St Luke’s campaign and plans are in place for it to become an annual event.

So why not order your pack now, get hold of the limited edition Hendersons in your local supermarket, and look out for the adverts on a Sheffield street near you? Your city needs you!

We were so impressed by Jordan and Channien’s determination and ability to inspire others that, as part of our developing talent initiative, we created a fundraising campaign to support them: The Workshop’s Challenge 2012.

Using our Mission:Explore platform, everyone at The Workshop took part in missions and raised money to help give Jordan and Channien the chance to fulfil their potential.  We certainly made a splash off the 10 metre diving board at Pond’s Forge, even if only a few of us actually dared to scale the dizziest of heights in the end! We baked cakes as part of our Queen for a day mission, inspired by the famous words of Marie Antoinette and then went round the bends at the Manchester Velodrome in a hotly-contested race. You can watch the team in action on our youtube channel or check out the photos on flickr.

The challenges raised a fantastic amount of money to support Jordan and Channien’s ongoing training and our director Mark Pearce recently was able to present the young divers with a cheque for £2012 each.

Jordan’s tremendous power and speed has meant that he has made finals and pushed for medals on the junior diving grand prix around the UK this past year.

Channien has won medals at all the competitions she has entered this past year. As a result of this performance she has been selected onto the National England Talent Squad.

“The funding received enabled Channien to take part in these competitions and it has helped with every aspect of her diving success this year.”

- Channien’s mum, Suzanne Lancaster

Thank you to clients, friends, colleagues and family who supported and donated to the campaign.

Our brief was ‘to encourage children to feel with real intensity – and in the first person – what it’s like to be in the shoes of the characters in the films’.

The TV special features a number of young people with dyslexia, each with their own story to tell: Ben struggles with memory, Khalaya with reading, Zach with jumbled letters and Rebekah with spelling. We’ve drawn inspiration from these stories and created four fantastic games which give users a chance to ‘Try being me.’

It’s a very emotive piece – living with dyslexia can be frustrating and annoying and we don’t shy away from that. However, we’ve also represented the creativity and positivity embodied by the young people in the film; they’ve developed their own, successful coping mechanisms for living with dyslexia and they’re very articulate about the ways in which dyslexia also enriches their lives.

We’re very proud to have been involved with such an innovative project – get in touch if you’d like to know more.

For a BBC perspective, check out CBBC Executive Producer, Japhet Asher’s insightful blog post.

Watch the show and play the games

The Try Being Me interactive special is live now on the Newsround website

My Dyslexic Mind – the documentary – premieres at 5pm, Monday 7 January 2013 on the CBBC Channel (Freeview 70 , Sky 613, Virgin 701).

We became more responsible (and responsive!) thanks to our journey of interdependence with National Geographic.

We fought for pole position with learndirect – nothing ventured, nothing gained.

We unleashed Gordon Rilla on the Children’s Media Conference (before sending him back to his desk).

We continued to speak out for Parliament’s Education Service.

We were observed by no less than taste cavalier himself, Jay Rayner.

We brought portals, people and play to Sheffield Hallam University, Create and the BBC.

We made a splash with products for the RNLI and won Olympic silver for John Lewis.

We got wings. Redwings.

We dived, we baked and we biked for Britain’s Olympic future (with a little celebration along the way).

And now? A commercial break. Thanks to everyone who played a part in our 2012.

See you in 2013!

From everyone at The Workshop.

In late 2011, we were commissioned by BBC Bitesize to produce a suite of history activities for 11-14 year olds and, as an early Christmas present, they’ve gone live today!

From Medieval Life to Hiroshima, the activities cover centuries of historical content. Designed to support revision, the activities don’t just recap knowledge, they also ask users to form, and justify their own opinions about key events. We wanted to get people thinking!

Our animation team created beautifully rich, quirky infographics, which made historical sites and characters instantly recognisable, and definitely memorable. They’re funny too, where appropriate – and we certainly didn’t hold back on the gory bits!

Head over to the BBC Bitesize site to start testing your knowledge.

Also, keep your eyes peeled for more exciting project news in the New Year!

1. RNLI  WET and DRY tea towels

Add a splash of nautical colour to the drying up this Christmas with these ’WET’/’DRY’ tea towels.

RNLI asked us on board earlier this year to develop a high-quality product range that was synonymous with the sea and conveyed their heritage. We worked on the project with our longstanding friend Nick Munro and created the ‘Signs of the Sea’ range based on the International Code of Signals. Profits from the range go towards the essential running costs of the RNLI.

Read more about our project with the RNLI

2. Adopt a horse at Redwings

When you adopt you’ll be sent a certificate, photos of your horse (or pony, mule or donkey) and even an invite to their birthday party!

Redwings are the UK’s largest horse sanctuary, running rescue and veterinary centres across the country and caring for more than 1200 equines at any one time.

3. Forged Stainless Steel Knives from Taylor’s Eye Witness 

The Forged knives range from Taylor’s Eye Witness has won many design awards and would make the perfect present for anyone who’s a dab hand in the kitchen. Taylor’s Eye Witness is one of the longest standing manufacturers of steel knives in Sheffield. 2013 will see a year-long party to celebrate The Sheffield Stainless Steel Centenary.

4. Yorkshire Gold canvas bag

Sheffield’s Jessica Ennis did us proud by winning heptathlon gold at the Olympics. In fact, Yorkshire won 12 medals in total – 7 of which were gold. To celebrate, an award winning eco-print factory in Yorkshire has created this exclusive bag for their entry in the Master Cutler’s challenge. Show your support to our Olympians with the Yorkshire Gold canvas bag.

5. We Live Here products

Celebrate Sheffield and support local talent this Christmas by picking up a Park Hill tea towel, Cooling Tower earrings or a Roxy Disco print from We Live Here. We Live Here and Britarama founder Jonathan Wilkinson creates beautiful works of art that celebrate the buildings and scenes that define where we live.

Have a Merry Christmas from everyone at The Workshop.

The result is a site that asks you to trace your interdependence journey. Aimed at children, parents and teachers, it allows people to discover and map which countries they depend on for the items they use every day. The site also uses live data sets, which show the countries that other people around the world depend on too.

This project marks National Geographic Education’s shift from Flash content to HTML5. We built the site using the latest responsive design techniques, which means it looks great and works well on mobile devices, and is open to a wider audience.

You can read our full case study on the Work section of the site, or why not learn about your own interdependence journey?