Every year in October, first-year students at the Arts et Métiers campus Arts et Métiers Clunytake part in their Grand Défi, a 24-hour community project to benefit the residents of Cluny. Due to the health crisis, they had to adapt and fulfilled their commitment to the town of Clunyby creating Christmas decorations.
Karine Gauthier and Eva Vanstavel, first-year students in the Grande Ecole program, are the two leaders of this civic project. They reflect on their experiences.
THE PROJECT
The aim of the project was to create Christmas decorations for the town of Cluny with the participation of our entire first-year class at the Arts et Métiers campus Arts et Métiers Cluny. It was important to us to carry out this project in line with ecological, ethical, and inclusive values. The project took place over four weeks, from the announcement of the project to the installation of the modules in the town of Cluny.
We wanted to help the municipality decorate the entire town of Cluny by creating Christmas-themed decorative modules. To do this, we received financial support from the town hall and from second- and first-year students. We were also loaned equipment and we machined the wood in the association's premises.
SOLUTIONS PROPOSED FOR CONSTRAINTS
The challenge was to get all the students on campus involved in the same project while respecting physical distancing and health restrictions. This required us to innovate and come up with a new way of organizing things. For example, we asked our classmates to do certain tasks individually, such as making pom-poms in their rooms before assembling them into garlands.
We had to think about ways to involve our classmates who were not on campus at the start of the project. For example, the drawings and plans for the modules were created remotely and scanned, which allowed all of our classmates to participate regardless of where they were located.
Managing a group of 161 students was no easy task, which is why we set up different teams with leaders for each area. Among others, there was a construction team, a treasury team, a garland-making team, a materials purchasing team, a sewing team, a lighting team, a painting team, etc.
In addition, the deadlines were very tight. We had to juggle our student schedules with this project during a busy exam period.
This required everyone's investment and involvement, and we took turns according to each person's schedule. We needed to divide up the tasks efficiently in order to meet the deadlines.
ENRICHMENT
Leading this project was very rewarding in many ways. It allowed us to develop our organizational, teamwork, group management (161 people), project management, and communication skills and tools (reports to be made at each stage) in a very concrete way. It was important to learn to communicate clearly in order to keep the entire class informed.
Task prioritization, logistics, storage, and procurement were also key areas we worked on to optimize our organization.
This project allowed us to explore new areas that we hadn't had the opportunity to discover before. We had to learn how to draw up a detailed budget and manage a rather tight budget. Friends taught us how to use woodworking machines, and we were very proud to have made the wooden decorations ourselves, from start to finish.
Finally, the implementation of the project, the meeting with the Mayor and the Deputy Mayor, as well as the installation of decorations with municipal officials, allowed us to discover how to finalize a project of this size. We also had to develop presentation skills in order to showcase our modules to important local stakeholders.
THE RESULTS
This project presented us with many challenges, but these challenges brought us even closer together, despite the health conditions in place. We acquired new cross-disciplinary skills, both manual and interpersonal. This project took our minds off the lockdown and exam period. Finally, we are very pleased to have completed this project, thanks to all the first-year students.
