Reprinted with permission from Canadian Florist September/October 2019; canadianflorist.com
Based in Vancouver, Louisa Lam, AIFD, PFCI, CPFD, is a floral design educator, judge and, now, the National Membership Committee chair for the American Institute of Floral Designers (AIFD). She is the first non-American ever to ascend to the executive level of AIFD.
Thirty years ago, Lam was a trained cartographer in Hong Kong, working in a government position on urban planning and land use. She lived in a world of numbers, topography and Earth contours, observing shapes, lines, elevations and scale.
After graduation, Lam began her first professional job, but she still wanted more. “I just wanted to learn something,” she recalls. “I wanted to explore another field, so I started studying floral design.”
After four years of courses at the International School of Flower Arranging (ISFA) in Hong Kong, as well as training with instructors in Malaysia and Singapore, Lam ventured far down that alternate career path. She participated in, and won, several design competitions in Hong Kong. Floristry looked like a viable professional alternative to cartography when ISFA invited her to teach, which opened a new world of floral education to the young designer.
In 1989, Lam moved to Vancouver with the option of taking a cartography position with a university geography department. But within one week of arriving, she walked into a flower shop and asked if there was an opening. “I realized, maybe it’s time for me to change,” she recalls.
Lam knew she had something fresh to offer her adopted city’s floral industry. “I can say only that my design is different from what was here at the time. I designed with a combination of Oriental and Western influences. I had studied Westernstyle design, but with influences from my culture, my own style emerged.”
One of Lam’s employers took her to a design show at the Vancouver Flower Auction. She saw demonstrations and competitions and recalls thinking, “Next year, I want to be one of them.” She joined the Canadian Professional Floral Designers Association (CPFDA) in 1990, and “started my personal chance to be exposed in the business,” Lam says.
After only one year of working in Vancouver, Lam opened a retail floral store on West Broadway Street. She called it Floral Art, and designed a shop logo using English and Chinese calligraphy. She grew the business, built up a local customer base and gave birth to a son. Becoming a mother prompted another career shift for
Lam – she yearned for a way to balance parenting with floristry.
That’s when, in 1993, Lam closed her retail venture and began to teach continuing education for the City of Vancouver’s school district. “I love teaching basic floral design because students are so eager to learn and, for them, everything is new. I also like to teach advanced classes – it’s good for an educator to keep growing and learning this way.” She figures she has taught thousands of amateur and professional floral students over the years.
Lam tested for AIFD accreditation in 2008, and was inducted in 2009. In 2013, she was part of the first class of AIFD members who became accredited as certified judges and evaluators, a role that has led to more travel for Lam, including around North America and throughout Asia. She is also president of AIFD’s Northwest Regional Chapter and a member of Professional Floral Communicators International (PFCI).
For the past seven years, Lam has served as head instructor and curriculum designer of the professional floral art certificate program at Vancouver’s Langara College. She also offers courses in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. She believes that creativity is not something you can teach.
“I always say that if you want to become a good designer, the foundation of design education is important. You can learn the skills and the basic principles of design, but you need to practice and find your own creativity. Without your own image, without your own style, you are just copying.” She continues, “It is not humanly possible to learn to be creative or to teach someone to be creative; however, it is possible to guide and stimulate someone to gain an insight into creativity and to spur them to find the spark within themselves.”
Earlier this year, Lam became the chair of AIFD’s National Membership Committee, having been involved with the organization’s recruitment effort since 2014, working as the international team leader. “Under my team, we have members who speak Japanese, Spanish and Korean, so we translated all the English wording in the membership video to five languages.” The significance of this initiative can be measured in the growth of AIFD applications from outside the U.S. According to Lam, one-third of the candidates are now from Asia.
Supporting the international growth of AIFD is important to Lam. “It’s not about the face, the colour or the nationality. If you want to pursue AIFD certification and take the test, you can do it. People in this organization want to give you the chance.”
Lam’s native language is Cantonese, and she also speaks Mandarin and English, but the language she is most fluent in is the international language of floral design.
