On the final day of term for the Y12s (before some of them headed off to work experience or the Gold DofE qualifier in the Brecon Beacons!), the D&T department once again took a group of A Level Product Design students to the New Designers Show at the Design Centre in Islington. And once again they not only had a great day out in London but they also came away inspired by what they saw.

Unsurprisingly we took the opportunity to take in some of amazing buildings in that area (an increasing number of our students are now choosing to study architecture at university) and the day started at Kings Cross where we wandered past Thomas Heatherwick's soon-to-open Google HQ, with its amazing roof gardens and quirky ground floor developments, before moving on to Coal Crop Yard, another Heatherwick designed development that is also home to Tom Dixon's main UK outlet. From there we then made our way along the Regent Canal into Islington, just in time for a bite to eat before heading into the centre for the afternoon session - which coincidentally is the one where they announce all the awards, so the atmosphere was buzzing to say the least.  

The New Designers Show, which has been going for many years and is very well known and respected throughout the industry, serves many purposes. For the final year undergraduate students it offers the perfect opportunity to show off their skills to potential employers, including the product design agencies, in order to secure jobs. For the universities it offers a great shop window to promote their courses (a mini industry-specific UCAS convention!), which of course also really helps the Y12s as they are about to start applying to courses this autumn. And for the A level students it also offers a great insight into the whole design process, which should in turn help them with their A Level NEAs which they started a couple of months ago.

And what made it particularly special this year was that for the first time we discovered when we got there that, unbeknown to us, not one but two past Balcarras students had been chosen by their respective universities to display their final year products at the show. It was obvious that both George (currently at Manchester Met) and Adam (currently at Nottingham Trent) - whose uber-cool 'Diskothek' had been picked out by John Lewis as being one of their favourite designs of this year's show - were also really excited to see the latest generation of Product Designers from Balcarras making their way to the show - and hopefully being inspired in the process! It will obviously be interesting to see which of the current crop do end up working in such an amazing industry.