DJCAD in conjunction with the V&A: Design in the community

Congratulations to all those pupils in S1-S3 that took part in the ‘Design in Action’ workshops on Tuesday 25^th February 2014 that ran in the Art Department all day.

3 final year graduates from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design ran a variety of practical design workshops during lessons exploring environmental design initiatives for swimming pools, play parks and learning support facilities.

Tanith, Alison and Nicole are currently in their 4th year at DJCAD studying the B Des (Hons) in Interior and Environmental Design. Their final year projects required participation with young people to develop ideas and explore user needs; which was an ideal opportunity to raise pupil awareness of environmental design and develop their higher order thinking skills.

Tanith McKenzie is designing new initiatives to increase attendance to swimming pools and worked with small groups of pupils identified as non swimmers to create friendly interactive places to swim. Pupils were asked to develop their own 3D pool environments exploring colour, shapes and texture adding features such as personal changing booths, pool swings and even lava lamp tiles. With a plethora of pipe cleaners and coloured foam pupils designed engaging spaces with more consideration to privacy, changing facilities and pool access.

Alison Best is designing outdoor facilities for young people to play and socialise. Through group discussion and collage she encouraged pupils to create personal environments that explored personal desires where pupils developed outdoor pods that involved interactive seating, Wifi connections and music venues. The final designs illustrated the importance and need for more outdoor spaces for young people and Alison has encouraged pupils to attend the final year degree show to see how their ideas will be used in her final presentation.

Nicole Tennant is exploring Learning support environments and worked closely with Tay 4 juniors to engage with both indoor and outdoor spaces. Pupils were encouraged to design within an existing laser cut model exploring rooms that would encourage interaction and participation. Ideas that came from pupils involved connecting race tracks between buildings with the importance of colour running through interiors to create various moods. 

All three Dundee students thoroughly enjoyed the chance to share their live design briefs and ideas with our pupils and were extremely impressed with the maturity of pupil engagement. Lessons were a hive of activity and the final design work and discussion illustrated the strength of ideas and enthusiasm from all Blairgowrie pupils.

Tanith, Alison and Nicole highly commended the work produced and were extremely motivated by the ideas and feedback they received. Their Degree show opens in May and they have warmly invited all pupils to the opening show to see their completed final presentations.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all three students for their creative workshop input with S1-3 pupils and the additional presentations to S4/5 and 6 pupils, whom found the ‘Life at art school’ talk, sketchbook presentation and Q& A session a valuable experience.  I would like to thank the department staff that worked alongside students and I hope that this will be the start of an ongoing dialogue between DJCAD students and Blairgowrie pupils and look forward to future initiatives.

Mrs Kennedy.