Hanging about with Farrow & Ball

On Thursday 16th March, the Blue Skies Level 2 students from Ferndown Upper School were guests of Farrow & Ball in Wimborne. Farrow & Ball produce ‘high end’ quality wallpaper and paints and their staff have to work in teams to produce the goods.

Production Manager and JET volunteer Simon Downey gave the Blue Skies students a presentation about what makes a good leader and they group also enjoyed a really interesting tour of the wallpaper factory to see how this product is hand made using traditional block and trough printing methods. In the paint factory, they learnt about the process from start to finish. The young people asked plenty of questions. Kerri, 13, said she “will remember seeing how well a job gets done when everyone works together as a system.”

After lunch, there was a demonstration of the correct way to hang wallpaper and the group then split into teams. There was a leader in each team who had to direct the others how to paste and hang wallpaper on boards specially prepared for the task. We have some very talented decorators in the group!

Simon Downey, Production Manager had this to say “It was great to have the young people from the Blue Skies programme here at Farrow & Ball. To be able to talk to them about how we use leadership and teamwork within our business and then watch them use those skills successfully in our decorating activity was fantastic. We put them to the test hanging our wallpaper in teams and the results of their hard work were impressive!”