Now, it's time to come up with some design ideas for your wormery!

PART A - Identify your 'must-haves'.

You need to think about the functionality of your wormery. How can you make it interesting, yet still fulfill its primary function as a hospitable environment for worms?  What are the 'must have' elements that a wormery needs to ensure the worms survive and thrive?  The Royal Horticultural Society provides this useful and brief guide to the conditions you need.  Remember, you can always revisit the wormery video from Step 1 if you want to refresh your memory about a successful wormery design.

Another important factor for the design is where you'll put your wormery. Do you live in an urban area? If so, perhaps you'll need to design a smaller unit that also perhaps aesthetically appealing to others. Do you live in a rural area and have a garden or even forested land for your wormery? If so, perhaps you'll want to build a larger scale wormery that includes natural materials. 

PART B: Activity

In this step, you'll generate ideas for your own wormery! Take 15 minutes to come up with 6-10 ideas for a unique design. The more ideas you generate the better. Try not to edit yourself at this stage - and don't get too involved in the detail of an individual idea.  The aim is to generate as many ideas as possible.  It can be good to set yourself some 'rules' - e.g. not more than 1 minute per idea, then move straight on to the next one.  The next post below will give you some techniques to generate lots of ideas quickly.

To help you come up with lots of ideas in a short time, here are some techniques you might try.  One is card modelling - as the name suggests, using a piece of card to come up with different shapes and forms.  Here are a couple of methods you might use:

A. Folding method: 

1. Take a piece of A5 card;
2. Using 3 folds create a structure that could be used to fulfill the brief
3. Repeat 2 or 3 times

B. Cutting method: 

1. Take a piece of A5 card
2. Draw 2 random lines across the card – they don’t need to be straight lines they can be wavy, jagged etc.  The key is that they should split the card into 3 shapes.
3. Cut the pieces out, then combine them in a variety of ways to create an initial idea that could fulfill the brief
4. Repeat 2 or 3 times

 Whichever method you use, photograph the shapes and print them so you can draw on top and annotate to create initial ideas.

Another great way to generate lots of ideas quickly is brainstorming.  This involves getting a group together so that everyone can put their ideas into the melting pot. Try it with friends or family!

Some useful tips

Whether you're working individually or doing a group brainstorm, there are some tips to help!

1. Wild ideas lead to creativity: Do not filter anything out at this stage, even if it doesn't seem "practical" or "possible." Keep an open mind - ideas can become more specific and feasible as we develop them further. At this stage, anything is possible.
2. Aim for as many ideas as possible: whatever comes to mind, create a record of what you're thinking. These thoughts can be words, visuals, ideas, images, materials, objects, places - at this stage it doesn't matter.  Or they might be card models which you can keep or photograph.
3. Inspiration can come from anywhere: Look around your home, your school campus and the natural environment in your area. Go back to the examples you looked at in Step 2 and look online for others.

>> Proceed to Step 4.

<<To return to the Challenge steps, click here.