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.

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…

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.

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!

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.

We have received early feedback from Romania, where local managers were ‘totally amazed’ at the reaction of their learners. They described their pilot phase as an ‘outstanding success’, and told us that the participants have been ‘inspired to continue and further develop their skills’.

We’ve also been lucky enough to see some of the work produced by pilot participants in Greece. You can see a couple of examples in the image above. We are stunned and gratified that Page Designer has enabled people who are just starting out with computers to produce such wonderful publications!

Page Designer is part of a wider project that seeks to address low levels of participation in vocational education and training by disadvantaged groups. It forms part of a suite of software resources designed to enhance people’s digital and creative skills, as preparation for entering the local labour market.

Page Designer is a simplified desktop publishing tool that allows learners to design and build a visually appealing document quickly. It’s designed to enable people with very limited computer skills to learn by doing something that’s creative, achievable and relevant to their interests.

The simple publications that people produce with Page Designer can be printed out and shared with friends and family. The approach is intended to engage the audience with IT by providing tools they would actually want to use.

Page Designer is currently being piloted in Poland, Romania, Greece, Italy and with the Somali community in the UK. To find out more about the project and try it out for yourself, visit www.enableeurope.eu.

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.

The idea is to use our Mission:Explore platform to create an estate-wide gaming experience that inspires and engages local people in their community.

Sanctuary Housing has spent £90 million improving the housing and £14 million to improve Shiregreen’s streets and green spaces. The Let’s Celebrate Shiregreen event allowed us to get out the gorilla suit and speak to kids, parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents. We even had them taking part in our Space Race and Chase the Ape missions.

Over the next few months, we’ll be running workshops with local people to create over 40 missions, which will help residents explore their community. Willing explorers will be inspired to get out in the open and traverse the Trans Pennine Trail, which runs through the estate. All missions will be published as a book and appear on the Mission:Shiregreen website.

The Garden is based on an initial pitch that we made to the BBC as part of their @North initiative just over a year ago. The idea was to create an area on the CBeebies site where the BBC could promote a selection of their TV brands to 3–6-year-olds. In the Garden, children can find characters from CBeebies shows and interact with them to discover links that launch existing content on the site.

One of the interesting and challenging aspects was to create the Garden as a ‘flexible framework’. This means that new animations can be dropped into the Garden, without redevelopment work, whenever a new TV brand is launched. The ability to develop and refresh the Garden over time was important to the BBC, allowing them to derive excellent value from the budget.

The results of user testing suggest that children will be excited to find their favourite characters and intrigued to see who else they can discover. The functionality of the Garden includes the ability to change the weather and even turn day to night, which our users found a lot of fun.

We are delighted to have created another engaging interactive product for CBeebies, to stand alongside our popular games for Mr Bloom’s Nursery.

Visit My CBeebies Garden

In October 2010, The Workshop was commissioned by BBC Bitesize to create a suite of 25 online learning games that feature three CBBC brands. This month, we’re pleased to say that the last of the games went live and look fantastic.

Covering content from the KS2 Science curriculum, the games reflects real adventures from three CBBC shows: Deadly 60, The Sarah Jane Adventures and MI High. We needed to blend learning from the fields of biology, chemistry and physics with narrative concepts which were true to the story and brand values of each CBBC show.

We worked with a Sheffield primary school science specialist to ensure that the learning was correct and met the demands of the curriculum. Most importantly, we user-trialled ideas and games with the target audience to make sure that we’d struck the right balance of fun and learning.

You can try one of the games above in the embedded player, or head over to BBC Bitesize site and start exploring.