Samantha Reynolds

Designer, Entrepreneur and Educator

As a young entrepreneur in Adelaide, Samantha Reynold’s first business was a florist shop. Today, in her role as Head of Arts, Applied Technologies and Business at Saint Stephens College, she continues to draw on the artistic skills she finessed during her time in floristry – along with the many creative skills that her Grandmother passed on to her.  

Samantha Reynolds is an innovator and an inspiration. She has rewritten the Senior Design Syllabus for Queensland and has been nominated as one of Australia’s Top 8 teachers, 2 years in a row. Add that to her impressive list of accolades within the business world (Samantha received the WIB Futurist Award, along with a string of other acknowledgements for her work bringing entrepreneurial skills to students through business and design). We spoke with Sam about her journey from floristry to Education and the Wearable Art and Design Show she facilitates each year.

What led you to take over a floristry business and later, to become a teacher? 

Sculpture, working with my hands and problem-solving have always come naturally to me. I’ve always been excited to give things a go. I think floristry appealed because each day I would have an opportunity to go to the markets and choose from a gorgeous range of materials. I would then take everything back to my shop and decide what I would create that day. It was always a discovery.  

After that I entered the business world and was working as the State Marketing Manager for Optus when I woke up one day and knew, with complete clarity, that I wanted to pass on life skills to young people – and that I would train to become a Teacher. I also thought it would be a good job to have with my own children… but it has proven to be every bit as ‘full-time’ as other jobs I have had… so that wasn’t quite the case. Two days after making that decision, I sat the entrance exam and now, 14 years on, I am still loving my career in teaching – much to the surprise of friends and family who had seen me as an entrepreneur and thought teaching was a phase I was going through. 

Whilst studying for my Teaching Degree, I continued running a company that specialised in marketing for small businesses and an events company in Adelaide which kept my floristry skills going, including running Adelaide Fashion Week and Westfields Fashion Festivals. 

I understand that you wrote the syllabus for Design in Queensland. What is your hope for the future of design education and education more generally? 

I am a Design and Enterprise Teacher and I believe that the skills that the arts and design fields teach students are immeasurably important, whatever field our young people choose to enter. The curriculum I created focusses on fostering enterprising skills, creative thinking and problem-solving as well as ‘pracademia’ which is about giving things a go and adjusting as you work. More and more, we are seeing the workforce demanding skilled people who are talented innovators, communicators, and creative thinkers. There is still such an undervaluing of the arts within our culture. I hope that we will see a shift in that thinking, because the skills that the arts bring to young people simply aren’t taught in other subjects, and yet they are so crucial to the future of innovation and business. 

Many of the projects I have created have a STEAMD focus and integrate design-thinking with science in some way. The biggest challenge is getting people to re-assess the value of the skills that art and design foster. I hope that in the future, we will see the arts embedded as a core value within our society, rather than only acknowledged superficially. The spirit of exploration and innovation that design fosters is a necessity in today’s workforce. 

Could you tell us about the wearable art parade that you mastermind? I understand that this year’s parade had a floral and forest theme. 

This year’s theme was ‘Fractured Fairytales’, so a lot of the costumes have a ‘foresty’ feel, and it was held in a magical wonderland setting that I designed and created. (I also love to dabble in set and costume design. My work on student production, ‘Into the Woods’, received Best Set Design in the Gold Coast Theatre Awards). 

Each year, my students draw on art and technology to design and make wearable artworks.  

We’ve had a range of themes; architecture, pop art, futurism. Last year’s theme was biomimicry which encouraged the students to look to nature and science for inspiration. That was one of my favourite years. Some of the designs the students came up with were world-class.  

Do you have a message for people attending the MBFF? 

It’s so wonderful to have community events such as this to bring us together. Schools can be quite insular in some ways and the community does not always get a chance to see the incredible work that students are producing. I hope that we can create more opportunities for our young people to showcase their skills outside of a school setting, and to connect with the wider community through events such as this.  

Like the festival, our Wearable Art and Design Show was a bit different this year. A film of the event will be released on the MBFF website in a few weeks. In the meantime, you can enjoy some snippets of the event and celebrate the student’s amazing creativity on the ‘Presentations’ page.  

Interview by Alice de Groot