At the Department of Design at Linnaeus University, Sweden, we attempt to pioneer education within the design discipline. The students get an orientation in many fields, focusing on sustainability. We teach very basic knowledge in different materials like textile, wood, plastic and clay, but the focus is on working on projects with processes and developing concepts. We have developed our curriculum with ‘Change’ as a key word, we want our students to make change in society by using design. Do the students really need artisan skills in these new fields? They are not going to be craft persons and the time is always limited in an education. My answer is ‘yes’. I think it is important for students to get the opportunity to learn basic skills to be able to make prototypes, workshops and exhibitions.In my research I have worked with different workshops focused on making. The aim is to get students interested in the practical, material based field and give them tools to learn what they need based on their own interests. ‘One-a-day’ is a project where students get the possibility to deepen their knowledge by doing the same creative activity or technique every day for a specific period. We meet once a week for group feedback and discussions about learning, artistic work and personal development. During the project, the students write a weekly reflection as well as summarize their experience afterwards. I take notes and photographs, to document all our meetings. Afterwards I analyse the material. In this paper I am going to discuss my experiences from this project as well as other similar projects with the aim to increase design students interested in material-based working.