Little Hands Design

Little Hands Design is an educational charity:

Our philosophy
The Founder and Director of Little Hands Design, Astrid Jacoby was born and grew up in East Berlin. She says:

“I grew up in a culture where making and repairing was seen as normal, often a necessity and something that was both practical to learn but also extremely enjoyable. It was an original make do and mend culture.

When I moved to London, the level of commercialism that came with design shocked me. Practical skills seemed unfashionable and, so it seemed to me, looked at as something separate from being creative and even worse, not linked to the so called academic skills.

I started Little Hands to first get children and then adults using their hands again; to be curious about practical problem solving through designing and making as well as to see making as a way to apply their academic skills. After all what is any knowledge worth if we can not apply it in any way?

We quickly realised the growing levels of anxiety and negative body image among especially teenagers and the effects of social media and consumerism on mental health and well being of not just our younger generations. Since becoming a charity we are now focusing on educating young people of sustainable fashion and practical ways to introduce and lead a more sustainable way of living.”

How we do it
Aged mixed classes:
We are quite unique with our aged-mixed approach with 8-18 year olds, sometimes even their carers as well, designing and making clothes and accessories alongside each other. Parents often comment that this provides an exceptional, judgemental-free environment which is particularly important for the adolescent years.

Public & in-house school classes:
We run both public camps and clubs as well as courses in primary and secondary schools in London. This enables us to provide opportunities to a wide range of children from different backgrounds, upbringings and locations. It is important to us that we value diversity and extend our teaching across the city to include every child possible.

Addressing perceived imbalance in current education system:
Why do we value the so-called academic abilities more than creative skills and definitely more than life skills? Textiles as a subject is primarily taught at state secondary schools with GCSEs and A-levels often taken by apparently lower ability students.. There are hardly any private schools in London offering textiles…

Although a new A-level in ‘fashion and textiles’ has been introduced by the AQA exam board in the hope of making this subject more interesting to schools and pupils, there is a real prejudice against creative subjects in the National Curriculum.

Inter-generational approach:

We positively encourage parents and carers to join the same courses as their children. In our adult classes we take great pride in the wide range of ages from very young professional women, stay-at-home mums to pensioners. We are striving continuously to increase the percentage of male students in our classes.

Save the childhood:
We support the ‘Save The Childhood’ movement. We “seek to provide environments that maximize children’s innate capacities and learning potential.” So that every child has affirmed the value and importance of diversity and feels nurtured in positive and self-affirming values, dispositions and mindsets.

Sustainable business model:
As charity we strive to enable our stakeholders to access and enjoy our courses through maintaining very low costs and raising bursary funding. We do this through a variety of approaches from public courses, private and public fundraising. Our particular aim is to attract regular sponsorships for our Sustainable Fashion Clubs from the fashion industry.

We put the life back into life skills!
By learning the rules, you can break the rules! We have developed our own methods, tricks and tips to create pieces that can run head to head with the ‘professionals’…

Let’s do it the Little Hands’ way!!!
Little Hands Design approaches the fashion industry from the opposite end of the garment creation process. Rather than a focus on research, conception and design drawing, Little Hands finds its niche in providing students with practical skills and a way of approaching problems which enables them to find solutions for themselves. Our work is project based, the skills and the way in which you are encouraged to approach any difficulties along the way are universally transferable. You will learn to work things out for yourself and find your own solutions rather than merely providing you with steps which you blindly follow and forget immediately. You gain a practical approach and a deep understanding of how designing and making in a sustainability concept works, acquired through trying and doing and questioning what you do and how you go about it. The skill set gained at the courses is invaluable and means that when you begin to design you are constantly thinking about how what you imagine or draw can be realised. Some would say that this limits your creativity, but an individual well informed of what is possible when dealing with different materials is actually far less limited, as at the end of the day people can’t say to you: ‘that design can’t be made’ (and if they do, you turn around and say: ‘yes, it can if you do X, Y and Z’).