Our Story

What do we do?

At The Junior Design Factory, young people (some neurodivergent) respond to design briefs from real clients, taking full creative control in answering each brief that lands in our studio.

With the guidance of professional designers, illustrators, marketing experts, and photographers the young designers are in charge of making the key creative decisions, and presenting their design proposals to each of their clients.

How does it work?

Young designers work through our industry tested design process - ‘IRDERP’

Want to know more about how it works for clients?

What do the young people achieve?

This ‘real world’ approach has a positive impact on essential skills including self confidence, team working, creative thinking and problem solving, all of which contribute significantly to their personal development and life chances outside of the classroom.

Through every live brief young people have the opportunity to work through our ‘Progression Milestones’. Young people start at Discover, Explore & Bronze Arts Award levels with us either in school settings, extra-curricular activities or online in our Arts Award workshops.

Once they have achieved these levels, they are then able to progress onto Silver and Gold Arts Awards. As part of these awards, young people complete units relating to Leadership Skills and support the participants completing lower levels of Arts Award.

Young designers at these levels have opportunities to mentor other members, before shadowing members of our professional design team - with opportunities to gain real-life work experience.

A Gold Arts Award carries 16 UCAS points - an invaluable achievement for those who sometimes struggle with the standard curriculum.

We have heard from many of our young designers that these qualifications, alongside their portfolios have helped them access further opportunities. These qualifications are accepted by Higher & Further education institutions & businesses supporting apprentices.

Once young people have progressed through these steps, many of our young people choose to become part of our ‘Youth Advisory Board’ where they share their feedback and ideas with our team to ensure our work and services are relavant and meaningful.

100% of all design fees from paying clients, or supporters, go towards subsidising our Arts Award delivery.