Designs on primary schools

What activities took place?

Getting started

The project began when the museum’s head of education wrote to the school and invited its design and technology (D&T) coordinator to attend the museum’s first primary conference and then bring pupils for a visit and workshop. The D&T coordinator had never been to the museum but was interested in what it had to offer. The primary conference provided a good opportunity for her to find out more.

Professional development

The Design Museum’s primary conference aimed to bring together the worlds of professional design and design education. The morning centred on a number of talks by leading designers and educational experts. Sir Terence Conran described his work and why he believes it is important to teach children about intelligent, innovative design. Several presentations focused on design initiatives for primary schools, including links between designers and schools and a collaborative project with BBC engineers. There was a strong emphasis on thinking skills and how design and creativity can improve the quality of life and learning in schools.

In the afternoon, the D&T coordinators toured the museum’s major exhibition at the time, ‘The history of modern design in the home’. To give them an insight into children’s experience of the museum, they also took part in hands-on workshops that introduced them to creative approaches to design at key stages 1 and 2. They left the museum at the end of the day with a range of project ideas and resources to take back to school.

The conference gave the D&T coordinator involved in the Deutsche Bank project an opportunity to meet the Design Museum education team and get to know the museum. She also took the opportunity to network with other teachers and share ideas and approaches.

The class visit and workshop

As the year 1 class topic for the term was ‘homes’, based on the QCA/DfES scheme of work unit 1D, the D&T coordinator decided to take her own class on a visit to the museum. With the flexibility to tailor the visit to meet the pupils’ particular needs, she chose to spend time looking at the exhibition on design in the home and to link this with a workshop on the design of chairs. Realising that she would need a high adult to child ratio with such young pupils, she enlisted the help of a number of parents for the visit.

When the class of 30 arrived at the museum, the teacher took one group around the exhibition while the rest of the pupils went into the workshop with the museum’s education coordinator and a freelance workshop leader. As the teacher had already visited the exhibition, she was confident about showing the pupils around with the help of a museum worksheet. The pupils looked at the different chairs on display (over 100), sat on some of them and drew their favourite designs.

Meanwhile, in the workshop, the education officers split the children into small groups and gave each a chair to look at in detail. They used questions to encourage the children to analyse the product: What do you like about your chair? What works well? What materials is it made of? Would you buy it? Gradually, the pupils gained confidence and began to express opinions, picking up on the language of design as they did so. With the help of an adult, they stayed focused on the task, producing labelled drawings of their chair and talking about its appearance, form and function. At the end of the workshop, the education officers asked each group to present their ideas about the chair and all of the children spoke up.

In the classroom

Back in school, the pupils put into practice what they had learnt on their visit to the museum by designing and making houses for mice, including mouse-sized chairs to fit inside them. They drew on their new knowledge of the design process throughout the project, thinking about who would use their chair, materials and methods of joining, as well as appearance. They were highly motivated and produced a wide range of design drawings that they then turned into colourful, innovative models.