ReAct Provides Tara With New Lease of Life

May 7, 2009 - PRLog -- Tara Luscombe was a successful consultant with interior designer Maskreys in Cardiff, with whom she had worked for nearly five years.  During this time she had been involved with many prestigious projects, advising on soft furnishing, room schemes and design in new buildings.  To Tara life was full of promise and she looked forward to her future.  However her world was turned upside down when in November 2008 she received news that due to the economic downturn in the industry, she was about to be made redundant from her position.
During a subsequent visit to her local Careers office, she was made aware of ‘ReAct’, the Redundancy Action Scheme which is designed to offer vocational training and new skills to those people having been made redundant or those facing redundancy.  ReAct is provided by the Welsh Assembly Government with support from the European Social Fund and is making a very real difference to the lives of those people affected by the current economic slump
Tara had long fancied the idea of running her own business, something in the Arts & Crafts industry really appealed to her.  After all, her work in interior design was all about the creation of concepts and mixing and matching styles and ideas.  
Not long before, Tara had been introduced to Art Clay Silver which is a relatively new product in the UK.  Referred to as ‘alchemy’ by some, it is silver supplied in a clay putty-like form, which when fired causes the organic (clay) binder to burn off leaving behind pure silver.  Having satisfied herself that this was what she wanted to pursue, she contacted her local ReAct office who confirmed what she had to do in order for her to gain funding to retrain in this field.
Tara chose Art Clay Supplies Ltd in Reading and explained her situation and what she wanted from her training.  As Art Clay Supplies would be entering into a legal agreement to supply services, they had to be confident of being able to supply the broad scope of teaching required by Tara.  Information together with costs for all aspects of the training were subsequently supplied to ReAct for their approval and after just a few days, an agreement with ReAct was signed and a bespoke 6 day training course for Tara was finalised.


Tara’s training program looked like this:
Day 1 – Level 1 Art Clay Certification
Day 2 – Level 1 Art Clay Certification
Day 3 – Level 1 Art Clay Certification
Day 4 – Fingerprints and preparation of pieces for Enamelling and Resin
Day 5 – Silver Imprints
Day 6 - Resins and Enamelling

As Art Clay Supplies owner Larissa Johnson says, “Tara was very enthusiastic about all aspects of the training and although some of the work, particularly within the Certification module is technically challenging, it is at this time that students really learn the skills.  Although Tara’s program was designed around her particular needs, I wanted other people present on the days that she was with us.  It’s that workshop environment with the general banter and interaction with others that brings up a lot of issues.  We’re there just to demonstrate the techniques and set the benchmarking.  It’s important for students to have that opportunity to ask and be asked questions.  When she has gone away to run her own business, she will be isolated from all of that stuff – except we’ll always be around to take her calls of course.
It was Tara’s goal to gain all the skills necessary to start her new business.  As she was already an ‘arty’ person having studied textiles and fashion design at college and then at university, these new skills meant that she would be in a position to supply a comprehensive one-stop shop service.
Tara’s comments after the six days were “After the shock of being made redundant my thoughts went straight to starting up my own business, especially as this was something I had wanted to do for a long time.  I have always been interested in art and design and had dabbled with art clay silver, after researching jewellery courses on the internet, Art clay supplies seemed ideal for me as there were plenty of workshops with great variety.  Larissa arranged a bespoke course for me and was very knowledgeable and helpful in every way. I am now in the process of starting up on my own and hope it will lead to a successful and exciting future".

# # #

We supply everything you need to get started with Silver Clay, Resins and jewellery making. Also we have one of the most diverse listings of Workshops and courses available with a variety of dates and times to suit all levels.