Students from Trinity School have recently been shortlisted for two national design competitions.

A group of Year 8 students have been shortlisted for the V&A Museum’s ‘Innovate’ National Schools Challenge, which tasks students in years 7-9 across the country to develop a solution to a real world problem. Students Alex Hatt and Lacey Smith, had their ‘Waste Reducing App Fridge Freezer’ design shortlisted by a panel of professional designers and industry experts, to make it into the shortlist of the top 10 entries from schools nationally. Their concept was around creating a digital fridge freezer, which is connected to an app that allows users to scan their food products before putting them into the fridge or freezer. The app will send notifications for when the products are due to go out of date, as well as sending notifications about recipe ideas. The idea was focused on tackling the problem of wasted food products.

In Year 9, a group of four GCSE design and technology students took part in the Design Museum’s ‘Design Ventura’ competition, aimed at challenging students with designing a new product for under £10 to be sold in the Design Museum’s shop in London. Students were asked to consider the needs and wants of real world users of the shop and create a useful, everyday product. The team, made up of Edward Tebble, Sawyer Newland-Marshall, Fletcher Tunstall and Sam Donegan, produced a hydrochromic colour-changing cork leaf that indicates whether house plants need watering, turning from a green colour to a white colour if the plant needs water. This year just over 15,000 students entered the competition and the judging panel narrowed this down to the top 7 entries, which included Trinity making the shortlist.

All of the students will now be attending pitching events for their respective competitions and will have the opportunity to further share and discuss their ideas with industry experts and professional designers, in a bid to take away an award. Mr Liam Anderson, Head of Design and Technology at Trinity School said, “We are incredibly proud of our students’ achievement in both of these national design challenges. At Trinity, we see design and technology as a central part of our curriculum, which gives students the opportunity to develop knowledge and skills with solving real world problems and developing design thinking to prepare them for the modern world. These opportunities on offer from the V&A and Design Museum give our students inspiring, unique and memorable experiences to understand more about design in the real world and meet and speak with experts in the field”.

Pictures: Year 9 Design Ventura team and Year 8 V&A team.