We’ve worked with Create for over a year now and they continue to go from strength to strength. Last week, Create’s restaurant, which opened in Leeds last summer, was reviewed for The Observer by respected TV food critic, Jay Rayner. And he liked it. He really liked it.

You can read the full review over on The Guardian website where you will also see a lovely picture of the restaurant’s interior, which we had a helping hand in creating.

We’d like to wish all our clients, suppliers, friends, families and pets a very happy festive season, from everyone at The Workshop.

Have a relaxed and refreshing time, and we’ll see you on the other side. We’ve got lots of exciting things planned for 2012…

Next year, we’re using our Mission:Explore platform to create The Workshop’s Challenge 2012, a fundraising campaign to support two of Britain’s Olympic stars of the future.

Jordan Houlden, 13, and Channien Lancaster, 11, have the support of their families and the potential to develop into contenders for the 2016 Olympics. However, they come from a disadvantaged and socially challenged part of Sheffield, where opportunities and financial backing are in short supply.

That’s where Challenge 2012 comes in.

Everyone at The Workshop will be completing missions and raising money to help give Jordan and Channien the chance to fulfil their potential and achieve success. We know that they can have a real impact on their community and inspire other young people to aim high and work hard.

Look out for more information about Challenge 2012 soon, including how you can get involved.

Facial-hair fever struck the country this Movember – and our boys were no exception.

With admirable additions all round (more or less), a select sample of The Workshop menfolk raised cash for not just one, but three great causes: The Prostate Cancer Charity, The Institute of Cancer Research and the Movember Foundation. Although most of the marvellous moustaches have now been removed, two top-drawer ‘taches remain intact.

When asked why he hadn’t shaved yet, one participant said: ‘It’s just kind of grown on me.’

Ber-bum-tache!

Last Thursday, we ran our annual event where we invite design students from Sheffield Hallam University to The Workshop.

The idea is for them to come and speak to some of our team about what we do, including how we approach client work and the way we promote ourselves. It’s a chance for students to see how the work they produce on their course might one day translate to client-led, real-world design. They leave with a much better idea of how to get noticed and begin their career in the industry.

You can see the full image gallery on our Flickr profile.

Our work on Cbeebies’ Mr Bloom’s Nursery has been nominated in the North West RTS Awards in the Innovation in Multiplatform category. The show itself was also nominated for Best Children’s Programme.

We created five immersive games to accompany the Mr Bloom’s Nursery TV series. One of the best things about the project for us was that we were able to work really closely with the show’s TV production team. We visited Mr Bloom’s actual nursery and met his vegetable pals in person, which really helped us bring the show to life for children.

For more information, check out our previous blog post about Mr Bloom’s Nursery or head over to the site and get playing.

We spent last weekend monkeying around at the Let’s Celebrate Shiregreen event in Sheffield. We were there to tell people about Mission:Shiregreen, a new project that we’re working on with The Geography Collective and Sanctuary Shiregreen.

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We’re almost ready to reveal an exciting European project that we’ve been working on since last year. Page Designer is a simplified desktop publishing tool that allows learners to design and build a visually appealing document quickly.

It’s part of a wider project called Enable that is designed to help disadvantaged groups across Europe enter the labour market by engaging in lifelong learning. It’s funded by Leonardo, part of the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme.

The project seeks to address low levels of participation in vocational education and training by disadvantaged groups in Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania and the UK. ‘Disadvantaged groups’ include, for example, mature workers and women with childcare responsibilities, as well as refugees and asylum seekers.

The project included a research phase that investigated ways to engage this target group, followed by the development of a number of software resources designed to enhance people’s digital and creative skills, as preparation for entering the local labour market.

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Remember when we told you about our iPhone app, Mission:Explore, being nominated for the Orange Volunteering Awards? Well, now it features on Orange’s new Do Some Good website as part of their mobile volunteering initiative.

The idea behind Do Some Good is to harness the power of mobile technology to transform the way people give time to good causes. Orange’s Do Some Good app allows people to volunteer through their mobile phone at a time and place that suits their lifestyle.

It’s a rather nifty idea and absolutely smashing to see Mission:Explore playing its part in the initiative. To find out more about Mission:Explore, head to the website or read our launch post.

Our Kenwood Park Road office has been voted Best Building in the bi-annual Sheffield Design Awards. Designed by drdh architects, our workspace was one of eight nominated buildings, with prizes awarded by industry professionals. The competition is run in partnership by Sheffield Civic Trust and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Yorkshire.