Kingston Maurward College do Conference flowers

Kingston Maurward College Floral Design students stepped up to the plate yet again with a challenge to race against the clock, transport, work within a creative brief AND keep to a budget.

The college was approached by the Association of Colleges (AOC) to create the table floral arrangements at the annual national conference at the International Convention Centre in Birmingham!

The AOC represents the Further Education sector and supports all colleges across the UK. The two day conference played host to 200 colleges and over a thousand delegates.
“When the email came from the Association of Colleges events team, it was received with excitement and slight concern!” Said Floral Design Course Manager, Tracey Nadin; “We love taking on new projects of all shapes and sizes, but I have to say this was a new level of challenge!”

The brief was to create sixty five table centrepieces for the conference’s evening gala. This presented several challenges including transportation and delivery of such a large number of floral designs from Dorchester to Birmingham.

Floral Design teacher, Sue Morgan, wanted to create a design which really fitted with the ethos of the College and cover a hot topic for florists, coming up with a design without the use of floral foam or single use plastic. Instead the arrangements comprised anthurium and nerine flowers in a recyclable cardboard box with a hand printed College logo on it.

This opportunity for students to work on such a grand scale and within such tight timescales, helped to reinforce the commercial element taught at Kingston Maurward. Level 3 Floral Design students worked on the designs which were then carefully packed into a lorry and taken to Birmingham for the event.  Student Caitlyn Philbrick, who helped to transport the designs to Birmingham said: “For the first time I feel like a real florist!”