Evesham College hairdressing students have been getting creative after the closure of non-essential services affected their access to accessories.
Students on the Level 2 hairdressing course can usually be found around Evesham in retailers sourcing eye-catching accessories to use in their college work.
With the country in lockdown this wasn’t possible so tutors set the students the task of creating their own accessories at home.
Each week the students at Evesham College, which is part of college group WCG, have been creating a different origami flower to use in their bridal hair styles.
Lecturers have given weekly tutorials on how to create the wide range of flowers – all made with the resources students have at home.
Lily-Rose Hewitt, 16 from Evesham, one of the students on the course, said: “It has been a good challenge, it’s difficult to do what we would normally do because of the pandemic and we’ve made the best out of a hard situation.
“I’ve always been interested in hairdressing and hope after finishing the course to work in a salon and go on to work in celebrity hair.
“We’ve got a good class dynamic and while learning in lockdown has been hard, it’s forced us to be more creative.
“The unit we have been doing is bridal hair and creating the origami rose was fun, we’ve just used coloured paper, glue and selotape to make the flowers.”
Lecturer Sarah Jones, who has worked in the department at the college for more than 10 years, says this is the first time they have ever encouraged students to make their own accessories and that she hopes to continue this after the pandemic.
She said: “It’s quite a big unit which is centered around creativity, so we wanted to come up with new ideas on how to drive that creativity in the student and get them to think outside of the box.
“Usually students would research the accessories and go out and buy them, we would never ask them to make things themselves.
“They have made a different flower each week, with the origami creations including roses, poppies, daisies, gerbera and a whisk type fower.
“It has definitely allowed the students to show their creative side more and we will be looking to continue the idea of making your own accessories for future units too, even when we are out of lockdown.”
Sarah, from Alcester, is also currently embarking on the 26 mile ‘Mighty Hikes’ Lake District challenge. She is looking to raise in excess of £500 by doing the challenge for Macmillan Cancer Support.
To donate to Sarah’s ‘Mighty Hikes’ challenge go to https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/sarah-jones.
Evesham College’s next virtual open event will take place on Wednesday, March 31 from 5.30pm to 8pm. For more information on the open event and to find out more about hair and beauty courses at Evesham College go to www.wcg.ac.uk/study.