Off to see our Creative Twins

We can't wait to meet up with our Creative Twins in Karlsruhe this week. We're back there showing at Eunique Applied Arts Fair for a second year. This year our ranks have swelled to ten, with designers joining us from across Nottingham and the East Midlands.

Debbie and I are also joined by Mandi, Kate and Georgina from South Nottingham College, who are hoping to set up a student exchange of some kind and are going to see exactly what opportunities there are. Hayley Banks from Design Factory, who have generously supported the ten designers, will be there to make links with creative organisations from across Baden Württemberg and beyond.

We'll be looking for Karlsruhe designers to join us in Nottingham for a reciprocal visit in October 2012 and catching up with Angelika, Brigitte, Nora and Philine from last year's twinning events. As you may know, I (Jayne from JC Middlebrook) have started to work with Brigitte making Nottingham Lace in silver. We hope this year's trip will produce more joint enterprises and design collaborations.

Wish us luck, we'll try and update you whilst we're there. See you soon

Creative Twinning 2012

We're in the midst of last minute preparation for Creative Twinning's visit to Eunique Applied Arts Fair in Nottingham's twin city of Karlsruhe. The original Creative twinning designers Debbie Bryan, Hannah Lobley and Jayne Childs will accompanied by 7 designers from across the East Midlands. You can find out more about the designers showing at Eunique here.

We'll also have representatives from two of our supporting partners Design Factory and South Nottingham College. Alongside the fair we'll be busy making links with creative organisations from the Karlsruhe area in preparation for the Creative Twinning showcase we are already planning for October 2012.

We took time out yesterday to take part in some German Language and Cultural Awareness training from the fantastic Jo Small at Optima Training. Our supporting partner Future Factory at NTU hosted us for the day as we prepared our language skills for the trip!