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MANIFESTO

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Are you curious for more? Would you like to get in touch? Feel free to contact our lead directly for any questions or inquiries you may have. tikvah@studioblended.com +31 6 42 47 29 69

1.

Alignment -

From rest and an organic way of life come our strength, calm, humanity, health, simplicity, balance and enjoyment of the work on effective and resilient curricula. 

We are - or at least try to be - unapologetically rested.

We set out to enjoy our very own day in our very own lives –
and long to enable clients and coordinators/teachers/trainers to do the same.

We are fresh, innovative, strategic and sustainable. 

One big advantage of taking some relaxation, is that it makes (y)our brain calm down, and then you come and look at the work freshly. You can imagine new things, take better decisions. Ensure the right direction.

2.

Natural rhtymn -

We love the natural rhythm of the seasons. We follow the seasons as natural time demarcations of project cycles and contracts.

We realign for each season what makes sense for us to take on and give our undivided attention to.

We support a workweek that feels natural to our biorhytmn. We mind the timing of initiating and responding to things, and are convinced that overall it amplifies our impact.

We work with high quality, and maximum simplicity. We come alongside you and partner with you to get things done.

3.

Independence, and an external view/action - 

We operate as an independent studio.

Despite being a foundation and having the possibility to raise funds via donations, we consciously choose not to do that.

Creating our own work that we believe in, and ensuring a robust finance base, ensures a fundamental independence, to offer you as a client the highest quality of advice and training.

We also think, independent from your institute and people, so we bring in something refreshing.

4.

Light and agile - 

We move lightly between people, and institutions.

We only work agile around a client.

5.

Undivided attention - 

We love to work in a way that allows us to give our undivided attention to each project. We are engaged - fully present, with the people, the team, the work, which is why we only take on one large project per season.

We believe in doing things well, simply for the sake of creating something good.

6.

Exclusive, time matters - 

Time is our most expensive currency. We protect it ruthlessly. 

When we’re working on an assignment with a client, we constantly monitor the time and realign as needed.

In this way we foster healthy collaborations and finance.

7.

Bespoke- 

We only work on bespoke assignments for clients.

We don’t work in generic ways on curricula - we always speak right into your content field.

We only work on technical matters, we consciously want to allow a legitimate contextualised and democratic local process for our clients, in which we do not take part.

We discovered that more than traditional teacher training, bespoke advice assignments have the best learning curve and maximum impact on the work of our clients - highly qualified and really busy, unique course and training coordinators.

8.

Human and technical - 

To us, technical and human resilience are two sides of the same coin and should be developed in a systemic and structural way.

10.

Fit for purpose -

We are well versed with ‘fit for purpose’ approaches, designing, developing and advising on the delivery of pilots and their consolidation.

Incrementality, rolling-wave, open-building, and modular approaches are our signature strengths.

11.

By design - 

We focus first and foremost on independent senior advice on curriculum design, at the drawing table, because this relates to a structural part of a coordinator’s own human resilience and the technical resilience of their course or degree.

Other aspects of design and development flow from there as well.

We love teaching the teachers. Yet, we do not focus on instruction or didactics, as we believe there is already plenty of possibilities for teacher qualification in that, and each teachers also may develop their own style.

We do not engage in delivery of client’s curricula.

12.

Pedagogical lens - 

We look at technology through a pedagogical lens.

We care deeply about the environment, and continue to grow in awareness about the carbon costs of technology. This is also why we design for simplicity.

13.

Bridging silos - 

We are passionate about bridging silos between your content field (climate / urban / architecture) and the world of expertise, and practice of educational design for effectiveness and resilience.

14. 

Making science actionable, infusing practice with research -

We see a continuum between capacity development of university teachers, and of trainers of professionals. Making science actionable, and infusing practice with research.

You see these cross-linkages reflected in all our approaches.

We can be both high level and conceptual, and grounded and practical, anchoring in a given reality and context.

We have a broad technical professional network with experts we can consult as necessary.

15.

Capacity development - 

We consciously do not speak of capacity building, but of capacity development, as a two-way process in training teachers.

We are always creating opportunities and possibilities for this dialogue and exchange in our capacity development implementation.

When it comes to curriculum design, we strongly believe in continuous professionalisation on the job, as a coordinator, trainer, teacher runs into design challenges or other structural issues whilst they work with the design.

16.

Equal partners - 

We come alongside a client, and operate as equal partners throughout the project duration of an advisory assignment.

Our senior advisors expect to have an equal partner relationship with the client’s main focal point (i.e. a coordinator), whereby client and advisor work together, combining the advisor’s specialist knowledge with relevant knowledge about the content, the organisation and access to the relevant departments.

Shared responsibility and joint decision making for the sake of ownership, allow the success and relevance of the identified outcomes and outputs.

17.

Human connection - 

We care about the human connection with our clients, and always look to the long-term in the relationship. Consistency and organic, open communication are important to us.

In fact, continuity and trust are an important motivation for being a foundation which can carry through professional relationships and even friendships, over time, beyond the end date of projects.

We let things come to us, and connect the right people, when the time is right.

The professionals we work with and for are not just our paying clients: they are partners with whom we have a strong, respectful relationship. We look for the authentic collaborations that further amplify our mission and impact.

18.

Knowledge and craftmanship of the teacher go hand in hand -

Like the knowledge tradition in Japan, we see knowledge development and acting always as two sides of the same coin.

Craftmanship (of the teacher) takes central stage.

Science and craftmanship shouldn’t be disentangled. 

It’s not true that ‘objective’ technical/technocratic scientists and educational advisors know how good education should be done. And that teachers are merely executers. Intellectual knowledge is not the same as actionable knowledge of the brain, the heart and hands.

Rather than seeing science as absolute truth, we see it as incremental insights. We need the knowhow of the teacher and the fostering of craftmanship.

19.

Blended - 

Good education to us involves a blended approach to teaching / training, a thoughtful combination of face to face and online delivery.

It is also about the new value of face-to-face time for pedagogy - as absolute premium time, no longer taken for granted. This is why we continue to experiment and innovate with ‘live’ time from a pedagogical angle.

The blend that makes sense varies for every individual context, and even for the one delivering a course, training or degree.

Our response is therefore a highly personalized, uniquely tailored approach.

20.

Clarity financially - 

We love how finance can bring clarity, health and simplicity. We aim to have accountability, transparency, ensure honest prices for true value of qualitative expertise and products, and ensure sound financial expertise and reliability.

21.

Tangible -

Matter matters. We love to make things concrete. To bring ideas, values into actual transformed structural designs.

We are flexible in our range of deliverables, from inventiveness with the ordinary solutions, to the beauty of simplicity in corporate, elegant, and even artistic end products.

Beauty is a language of calm to us. We create designs that instil function in beauty. Beauty instills calm, and a calmed nerve system is essential for learning and enjoyment of teaching.

Resilient education that stands the test of time - by design.