Once upon a time nine volunteers with the most interesting and different backgrounds came together to enjoy a week full of new happenings. They had their expectations and visions on how things should be in Iceland, but what they saw was really beyond the borders.

Participating in Iceland’s biggest and most important design festival “Design March 2013” is an experience hard to forget. Being a very young festival, it has already gained an international attention and respect, and an active involvement from the locals. As a relatively new and small country, Iceland expands beyond its borders very fast, especially in artistic industry. During the Design March, design and music, fashion and handicraft are all bind together into something the world has never seen before. It’s a great thing SEEDS Iceland have the chance to work side by side with designers and artists and people who make this all happen, and see how the festival grows bigger and greater with every year.

For the volunteers it’s a good insight and valuable life experience how the design world and big event organisation works, but for them we are the little helpers who can do important tasks to help everything happen on time. Our job included picking up important guests from the airport, making everybody feel welcomed by preparing goody bags, delivering brochures and posters to cafés and shops, taking pictures of various events and spreading the good word about Design March.

We had to learn, and not always it was the easy way. How it is to work in a design field? How a festival as big as Design March can be organised and who the heck does it all? How it is to be tired but keep up being respectful and cheery at the same time? How to solve occurring misunderstandings between different cultures? How to share one bathroom with nine people? But with no doubt, we searched the answers and we did learn. And we also gained the biggest lesson of all – the most important thing around are the people who care about each other.

Spring is the turning point when all the nice things winter has been hiding wakens and shows. Especially in Iceland, where the Sun is most welcomed guest, it is a big joy to observe development and growth. And growth we saw; from stable inner progress to various outer expansions! And You may think: Iceland is small, Design March smaller and group of SEEDS volunteers just a tiny part of it all, so why should anyone care in the first place? But just before the end of the camp we all saw the most amazing and biggest Aurora Borealis, which, technically speaking, is just a bunch of atoms clashing together, still everyone is standing amazed in freezing cold for hours. The Design March experience proves to us and the world - it’s possible to be small and important.

Madara Liepina
SEEDS Workcamp Leader