Working with Shopfront: Video series

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Developed as part of student’s coursework,

our community projects allow us to support

small, emerging and underfunded local organisations

to develop both capacity and resilience. We

work with them to scope and refine their ideas

for projects that range from designing to

pricing, governance to marketing. Then we

match them with students with relevant skills

and interests. This initiative allows community

organisations to get their projects developed

while students developed their skills with

real-world clients. The projects are a win

win for students and organisations. My name

is Danielle Fryday and I am the Hatch Taronga

accelerator program manager. Hatch is a program

within the Taronga Conservation Society Australia

and our focus is on finding and supporting

innovative ideas that can help address key

conservation and environmental challenges.

Hi, my name is Ben Madgen I was former basketball

player retired in March 2020. Last stop was

in Melbourne. But I started working for Charity

Bounce after about six months. Well, my name

is Marco Berti. I am a senior lecturer at

UTS in UTS Business, and I'm in the management

department. My name is Jenny Lee and I studied

a Bachelor of Design in Viscom for three years.

This is my final year and the shop front project

that I worked on was the Grove. My name is

Frazier Evans I'm currently studying a bachelor

in Visual Communications. I was working with

Zosia who works in the Sutherland Shire for

basically plastic free community and economy

involvement and stuff like that. My name is

Christina Ho. I am an Associate Professor

in Social and Political Sciences here at UTS

and for many years I've been coordinating

student placements for our degree, social

and political sciences, and that's where we

send students to an external organization

for a semester and they do Social Research

on behalf of that organization. So Shopfront

has been fantastic in helping us to place

these students with community organizations

for many, many years. The process, the concrete...

nuts and bolts of a process of engaging with

shopfront, well typically it starts a couple

of months before the beginning of the semester

when we are organizing a first meeting with

the Shopfront representatives in which we

start considering possible organizations that

can be engaged. So my experience with Shopfront

has been fantastic and in terms of how that's

played out, I initially attended an information

session online which was really valuable to

understand more about the program, what would

be required from our side as well as, you

know from the UTS side. I then put in an application

and spoke with one of the Shopfront team to

provide more information about what we were

looking for and where alignment might fit

between our project and the opportunities

within the university. Once Shopfront has

received the applications and they've decided

which ones might be suitable for our students...

then I will have a meeting with Shopfront

and just go over some of the details, we meet

with a lot of the workplace supervisors. I

introduce them to you know the kinds of skills

that our students have and their interests

and we sort of tweak the project descriptions

a little bit to make them, you know, just

as suitable as possible for the students.

Then as we get closer and closer, Well, as

we start the subject, typically there would

be a Shopfront representative, who is always

at your disposal - if you have any issues

or problem - but then, especially on the first

day, the first lecture introductory lecture

that is available to be with with the lecturer

for describing the the process and describing

the program to students and also giving some

background information on Shopfront, then

there will be another meeting... a couple

of weeks after in which the client organization

is actually introduced to the student and

finally, three weeks down the track, a meeting

in which the students, after they have already

started gathering some background information,

had the opportunity of actually meeting representatives

from the client organization and asking that

questions. So that's the first step in which

they students start actually working on the

organization, and typically the outcome, the

deliverable of this first step for the students

will be to prepare a proposal for the organization

and then, of course, we have several weeks

in which students are working on their organization

and again Shopfront has a fundamental role

in facilitating the connections between students

and the organization. And then, last but not

least, you have at the end of each subject

in which students are reporting back to the

client organization the result of their consulting

projects and also in this case Shopfront takes

a fundamental role in organizing the meeting,

in facilitating the interactions and also

making sure that the organization can receive

all the reports from different student teams

and providing them a comprehensive package

of information. Working with a real life client...

I've never done it before, so I kind of went

into it really excited but also kind of nervous.

I learned quite early on for not for profits

that they really do appreciate pretty much

every sort of help they get. Anything that

comes from the community people they're working

with, even if it's paid for by them, really,

really helps what they're doing. Why I really

enjoyed doing the work for them 'cause it's

it was building something that could be tangibly

used by them to create positive change. It's...

It's not something you get to do every day

as a designer, and I think it's probably something

that most designers would really like to do

most of the time, rather than just doing the

corporation stuff. 'cause that can be really

draining after a while. Not for profit organizations

and community organizations are even more

complex than, say, for profit organizations.

So in that regard, we are killing two birds

with one stone. We are helping grassroots

organizations, community organizations to

develop and - doing something good for our

society - and at the same time offering our

students a much better learning opportunity.

So students really can match up their personal

interests with the placement that they they

have the opportunity to go to, and we wouldn't

be able to do that without Shopfront, because

obviously Shopfront, you know has access to

so many different kinds of, you know, sometimes

they're tiny little organisations that I don't

know about. You know, like I've been introduced

to. So many organizations that I had no idea

existed. We sent out another student to the

Pacific Community Center this semester and

you know again, which is a small, you know

migrant community organization. These are

the kinds of places that students wouldn't

normally have the opportunity to go and work

with. But you know, thanks to Shopfront and

this unit, then they have this opportunity

to get that real world experience. And when

they can do it in an area that they have a

personal passion for, that's when their studies

really come alive. I think it's very important

to work with a community like I have a community

experience because I feel like, like you said,

we do work hypothetic and we work for ourselves

only in this design degree, so this kind of

allows us to kind of step out of our comfort

zone and it prepares us for the real world.

I think that's the main thing, like in our

final year, I think subjects like this really

allows us to kind of hone in our skills that

we need to kind of transfer as we kind of

go into the industry and in the workforce

as well. And engaging with real life problems,

which by the way I think is one of the distinctive

features of UTS as an organization, which

is very much practice oriented, does not mean

that we have to become a sort of a vocational

training focused university. On the contrary,

I think that the purpose of a university is

to develop the capacity of people to think,

to reflect, and to come up with innovative

solutions. But to do that properly, we need

to learn how to engage with complexity and

there is nothing best as a way to engage with

complexity than to deal with real practical

problems. So being practical, so engaging

with real life organization, which is what

Shopfront enables us to do, means being able

to understand the multiple nuances, the relational

problems and political problems that come

with trying to solve even a technical issue

like I don't know, improving the logistics

of a not for profit organization. Having real

life client experience is pretty invaluable

compared to anything else we've done in a

degree, because the degree can teach you how

to create, how to make something beautiful,

but it can't really teach you how to be a

part of a workforce and then to create something

that applies to a client. In a way that would

work in a real life setting. So we were able

to to utilize Shopfront not just for what

I came in for, which was the Starting Five,

the monthly giving program. I thought if we

could just get some traction out of this program,

that that would be fantastic. But instead

I had 7 seven teams, seven groups from the

class that all engaged in different areas.

So you know there was post COVID operations,

there was Google ad grants, there was obviously

Starting Five, there was social media engagement,

donor attention. So it was just a great mix

of different projects and you know, I learned

so much about not only the organization but

the sector. You know even more about our participants.

I think there's a growing awareness that in

some industries there's some kind of exploitation

of students who are doing voluntary internships.

And sometimes that's become quite a scandal

in some industries. Students are doing a lot

of unpaid work over many weeks or months,

sometimes years in some industries, and there

are some questions about whether you know

there's unethical practices going on. I think

that's why it's so important for when students

are going to do unpaid work that they get

adequate recognition for that, and at UTS,

you know it's very easy to build that into

the degree structure by having subjects where

students are getting course credit. I would

not be comfortable sending students out to

do unpaid work for lengthy periods of time

without them getting anything in return. So

in order for it to be fair, I think you know

universities should be able to give course

credit, and I think that's how degrees should

be structured so that it is part of, you know,

a mandatory part of their degree. They're

giving up their time, but they're also getting

this amazing experience that is recognized

in their transcript. I would definitely recommend

that other subjects do include this kind of

community, based, like talking with real life

client kind of experiences because like I

said it was in our final year and I think

kind of having that maybe in our second year

would have been great as well, because like

I said no one had this experience before in

any of our subjects was quite a different

one. And it was also like a group project

for the whole thing. So kind of having that

experience before and like working with a

team, working with deadlines, working with

someone that's going to use your design. not

hypothetically, but for the real thing would

have been great. So I definitely 100% would

push for the need for like the inclusion of

this like kind of community based like client

based projects in other subjects as well.

For me as an educator, there is no scholarship

which is not engaged. So engaged scholarship

is absolutely the reason why I am doing this

job. It offered a unique opportunity to engage

with big social problems. The projects were

so in depth. The detail was amazing and I

just the biggest thing that I I really felt

was the passion from from the UTS students

to really want to do their best, and to genuinely

want to help Charity Bounce and their participants.

One of the the groups that I spoke with, they

did actually comment how much they enjoyed

the project because it was real world focused

and also you know just that opportunity to

apply their skills and their learning to something

that actually had a tangible outcome. I guess

rather than a theoretical case study. I feel

that regardless of what degree you're studying

or what faculty. you work in, your professionalism

will be enhanced by having an exposure to

people who are different from you and especially

people who are on the margins of society who

may have experienced discrimination or you

know some kind of marginalization in our society.

It can only make you a better professional.

You know whether you're whether you're in

science and engineering, or whether you're

in business or law, in health. To have that

much broader understanding of all kinds of

people in our society can only make you a

better professional. So I think there's a

role for this sort of program wherever you

are at UTS. If you want to make your subjects

more real and more engaged. If you in other

words, if you want to do real work integrated

learning, then Shopfront is your way to go.

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