On Saturday, as part of our aim to challenge our students to become ever more creative in their approach - and to actually consider university courses and careers in design - the D&T team took a number of Y12 students to the Design Centre in Islington. Whereas the hugely successful trip to the BMW MINI plant in Oxford a couple of months ago was all about seeing manufacturing close-up, this trip was aimed at improving and inspiring their design work, and it didn't disappoint!

The New Designers Show has been a fixture on the design circuit for a while, but this was the first time that the department had taken a group to see the show [although it will unquestionably now become a permanent fixture]. The show offers the opportunity for students studying a design-orientated degree course - of which there are many amazing ones in the UK covering all the different aspects including graphic communication and sustainability [there was even work on display from De Montfort's Footwear design BA course!] - to show off their designs and portfolios to a much larger audience. It is unsurprisingly a great opportunity for companies and agencies to snap up new talent and it is no surprise that the awards on offer are sponsored by such well-known companies as Habitat and Joseph and Joseph. 

For our A Level students, it offers an ideal opportunity to be inspired by other students, who are often only a few years older than them, and to see at first hand the quality of their design work - including sketching, modelling and prototyping - all things that they will need to show in their A Level NEA projects which they have just started. Moreover, it also offers the universities and colleges the opportunity to promote their degree courses, something that many of the Balcarras students found particularly interesting. 

And if that wasn't enough, in the afternoon there was also time [having negotiated a very humid London underground] to visit the Design Museum in South Kensington. Although the Design Museum has now become a regular destination for the D&T department in Y10, this was a year group who, largely due to Covid, missed out on many of those trips. It was great therefore that they also got the opportunity to see some of the amazing exhibitions that the Design Museum has to offer and especially the permanent displays [Designer / Maker / User] that show off some of the very best of design - both past, present and future - in a really engaging way.