Audio Interviews

Sigal Cohen - Q & A with Andrew Senior

Welcome Sigal, I want to start off by asking you a question about Venezuela and about the difficult of being a designer there and also about the difficulty of being an entrepreneur there. What's the environment like in both of those "zones"?
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Is it difficult to be an entrepreneur - is the climate against the notion of being an entrepreneur or is there a strong sense of the need for business to be entrepreneurial?
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Now in your application - and people may have seen this on the website - you've talked about the difference between the rich and poor in Venezuela and the problems that that causes in terms of an understanding of design. You've also talked about the nature of culture in Venezuela and how multicultural society there is - can you say a little more about that, about the situation there?
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Have you found some similarities here in the UK in that sense?
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I'm also struck by something you've said in your application, which was about how Venezuela, because of the nature of society there, actually what you produce there can work anywhere in Latin America. Is that to do with that sense of being multicultural or is it about a relationship to Spain and Portugal which is felt across the continent?
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But we've got Manu here from Argentina - it's pretty cold in Patagonia isn't it?
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If I can talk to you now about coming to the UK and the experience of being here. You've been here for ten days, what's been the real highlight of the tour so far for you?
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But the question of the migration of talent away from Venezuela, did you see in any way a similarity with Scotland there? I'm talking about the brain drain, the talent drain down to London.
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And what about being here with nine other people from nine other countries. When you came did you expect to have a connection with other people in the group and what has that connection turned out to be?
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And are there any particular links you've made with other people taking part in the programme?
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Can I now come on to talk to you about being a business woman. Moving from the realm of being a designer into a space where you have to have a range of talents, some of which you might argue are about designing a process and understanding a process. But others of which are about financial management, human resource management, strategy and planning, marketing. How have you gone about making that transition from being a designer, into a space where you have your own business and you have to have those skills as well?
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So how did you come to get together with these other people? (she answers) So you've got a family business. And what that was what you'd always intended to go into a family business.
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That's a pretty intriguing story and one that suggests that there are other ways of making connections with people.
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I don't know whether you know or not but next year we're going to be inviting the finalists from the first three years of the IYDEY award back for an alumni event. How important is for you to be part of an international network of this sort?
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And just going back to the issue of design in Venezuela, one of the things that you were talking about in your application form was the need to educate the eye of Venezuelan consumers. To move away from a space the very rich are concerned about luxury, international brands and the very poor have no access to an understanding the importance of design in terms of improving their life and such things. How are you going to go about educating the eye of Venezuelan consumers?
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Now I know that you as a company have won a number of awards for your work in Latin America. How important is it for you to win on Friday?
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What is it that you want to do with the prize money if you win?
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Now you're a business woman, so I am going to ask you one other question. How important is it for you to build a market for design in Venezuela?
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