Celebrating our students: Charity trustee Tim takes a First in Design

After years working in the charity sector, self-taught graphic designer, marketer, fundraiser and father of two Tim Powell applied to Goldsmiths to study Design.

Over the last few years he’s helped set up London Reclaimed – a charity enabling disadvantaged people into careers through furniture-making – and turned local kids into bug-hunting biologists with his final-year project. Next week Tim’s graduating with a First.

After leaving school in Northamptonshire with A-Levels in Theatre, Politics and English, Tim moved to Lewisham in 2002 and spent a several years working for a charity in local schools and communities.

Over the years following he developed his skills in graphic design and marketing for XLP - a non-profit urban youth organisation creating better futures for young people - before moving to Mexico with his family for six months to work and train with a Christian group, getting involved with orphanages, house building programmes and homeless work.

Returning to England, Tim continued work in both marketing and fundraising for the charity Time For Families, which later merged with PACT, the national service offering practical and emotional support to prisoners and their families.

In 2011 he helped launch London Reclaimed with friends, employing young people in Southwark who need help taking a first step into the workplace. Under the motto ‘reclaiming timber, reclaiming lives’ the charity teaches people how to create beautiful bespoke furniture out of waste wood.

Believing he’d reached the limit of what he could teach himself in graphic design, and attracted to both Goldsmiths’ unique course offering and proximity to home, Tim, who was then 26, applied to study here: the first and only university he considered. Throughout his degree he also continued to work with London Reclaimed as a trustee, overseeing fundraising and recruitment.

“I’m passionate about community education and passionate about design and I wanted to see how the two could co-exist,” he explains. Tim successfully applied for one of ten full Lewisham Fee Waivers offered to the best and brightest talent in our local area.

During his studies Tim found out that his daughter, who was then aged two, was autistic. With doctor’s appointments, charity work, coursework and lectures, it was a stressful and busy time where Tim had to “learn a whole new way of parenting, re-learning how to interact” with his child, but he says the Department of Design was really supportive and understanding.

“I feel like I’ve been challenged at Goldsmiths. I could have stayed in my comfort zone and done three years of graphics work but my course leaders really pushed me. We were given textile projects, or asked to make something out of wood, creating something physical rather than digital.”

During his three years at Goldsmiths, Tim took a work placement at a small design agency, giving him valuable experience in how a small creative business operates. In partnership with fellow student Wee-Min Chin, he also won our annual competition to design a trophy for winners of The Orwell Prize for political writing. 

For his final year project, Tim created Parkroscopes, robust microscopes which are placed in parks, giving people the opportunity to look at and photograph their environment at micro-level. Parkroscopes have several different lenses on top including some which work with phone cameras. You simply lay your phone on top of the scope, line the camera up, zoom in and focus, and can then upload pictures to the Parkroscopes website or social media.

Tim explains why he developed the project: “I had a desire to not just sit behind a computer all year and do something that meant I was outside, working with nature, educational but not telling people how to learn. Parkroscopes really gives people a chance to engage with the world around them that they might not notice with the naked eye. We tried them out in local parks, schools and on Bexhill Beach.”

At this year’s Department of Design Degree Show, held at a packed-out Truman Brewery on Brick Lane, the project caught the eye of a Forest Gate Festival organiser, who ended up hiring the Parkroscopes for kids – joined by Tim - to bug-hunt at the event

Tim graduates next week with a First on the BA Design, Creativity and Learning course and is now busy taking on freelance design work.

“The most important thing I’ve got from my time at Goldsmiths, having immersed myself in Design for three years, was the development of a real confidence in both my technical skills and knowledge. My course leaders gave me new ideas, different ways of approaching design briefs, and most importantly: more confidence in my ability to show and teach others how to do it as well.”