Update on student design competition with Collyers Sixth Form College

I returned to The College of Richard Collyer last week to review progress in our competition “Designing for the Future” which  requires students to design products which meet one or more of the challenges of ageing. 

In all, around 70 AS level students have entered our competition and if this visit is anything to go by, we will have around that number of unique designs to judge next month. Good to see so much innovation.

I was also delighted to see that the students had embraced the brief so readily  – the most thoughtful designs came from those who had spoken with their older relatives about the realities of ageing, something which must seem almost unimagineable to this group of 16 year olds.

I was helped out in my duties by Holly Sheppard, a product design graduate who was fitting in some work experience before starting teacher training. Her previous work has been for children. I am hoping to persuade Holly of the benefits of designing for an ageing population. In fact, perhaps all young designers should, as part of their training, be required to design or redesign one everyday object to make sure we all have the right tools we need as we get older.

Next month I am joined at Collyers by judges Denise Stephens, co-founder of Enabled by Design and previous winner Harry Trimble who is now in his final year at the University of Brighton. Together we will attempt to select one winner and 5 runners up from the finalists selected by tutors Kate Sharpe (Faculty leader – Arts and Communications) and Hari Atkins (Subject Leader – Product Design, Materials). Watch this space!