Transcript:
Cara Williams, Schools Programme Manager, V&A: DesignLab was set up about 4 years ago when the Sackler Centre opened and the idea is to engage teachers and students with the creative industries and the V&A’s collections.
Hugh Heatherwick, Associate Heatherwick Studio: Organizations have to look at themselves and work together in more creative ways, we’ve got the V&A as an enormous resource, we’ve got the Heatherwick Studio that is doing serious design projects around the world, and then, there is a school in Hereford.
Nick Harriman, Learning Manager, Whitecross High School: We thought it would be an amazing opportunity for the students to get involved with people they might never have a chance to meet.
Cara Williams: Heatherwick is obviously one of the leading, innovative design companies working at the moment in the UK. The project included a visit to the Heatherwick Studio, so they were able to see work in progress.They could see prototypes, and they could actually see the environment that designers work in.
Stuart Wood, Head of Innovation, Heatherwick Studio: Our interest is very much the world of creating interesting things. Were just trying to have interesting ideas and turn them into something real. Play dough, I think everybody’s played with this stuff.
Student1: I like the big bench that they designed; they said that they got the idea from the play dough press.
Cara Williams: On the same day they actually visited a work that’s been designed by Heatherwick at the Wellcome Collection, so they were able to see something that’s been installed and to see the impact that it has in its environment. The students were able to work really closely with the designers and get a real insight into what it’s like to tackle a brief. We used the collections to look sort of sideways for design inspiration so the collections that we teamed up with the different briefs were quite unexpected.
Mark Burrows, Head of Making, Heatherwick Studio: The first one is a structure to span the river Wye, and the area we choose was Jewellery. A personal item to stop you getting wet and again we chose something which was very odd: Ironmongery. A seat that could only really function when there was two people present to occupy, you immediately start thinking of weird and wacky things with that, but we chose an area which was Glass. A folly building in Hereford, the area we chose for them to look at was Ceramics.
Abraham Thomas, Curator of Architecture, V&A: Welcome everyone to the V&A, I am Abraham Thomas, I’m Curator of Architecture here at the museum and I’m working on this exhibition on Heatherwick Studio. What fascinates him is this idea of form making within space and understanding how people interact with materials and construction and techniques.
Student2: The whole thing was awesome, absolutely awesome. Every single thing I saw in the exhibition I looked closely at, I listened to the audio to go with it and I just found everything so interesting, the materials you made it out of, everything.
Student3: The bus was very cool because it was life-size and you could see how it was going to be.
Stuart Wood: To design something you have to understand how it’s made, where it came from, and then what the limitations, what the possibilities are, so unless you have access to the real thing, or experts who know about the real process you kind of can’t even begin so the V&A’s resources are essential for this project.
Mark Burrows: We kind of tried to pick collections that were big so they wouldn’t stop researching, there was no end to what they could kind of explore there.
Reino Liefkes, Senior Curator, Sculpture, Metalwork, Ceramics, and Glass, V&A: Sand is the main component of glass. The strength really of our collection is that is has both incredible depth but also incredible breath as well, you know its got glass in this case, if were looking at glass of maybe 4 or 5 centuries and its within all those periods it has got incredible masterpieces.
Nick Harriman: Their definition and their understanding of the word design has completely changed to where it was at the beginning of the project. They understand more about the practicalities of design, about materials and processes, and how they might use those to be inspirational in whatever it is that they want to do.
The project has had a really positive and I’d say an important drive and part of their life for the last 3 months and we’ve noticed them working in new ways where they’ve had to work independently, where they’ve had to work out their way of finding materials, processes…etc.
Students: Processes that we’ve explored are different ways of moulding clay, hydraulics, inflatables, different ways to cut and bend wood, plastics, how we can make wood represent a metal that we’re going to use.
Cara Williams: Heatherwick works in a really cross-disciplinary way, and I think that’s brought a lot to the project because it’s important to understand that things don’t exist in isolation.
Nick Harriman: Normally when we deliver a project we work on our own, and we work as an Art Department, but actually it’s been really nice collaborating with teachers from other departments, like Amy from the DT Department. They’ve been stuck, they’ve had to get out of problems, they’ve had to work with other people to recognize those problems, and I think ultimately the fact that they’ve really experienced what it is to be like a designer that not all designers know everything and they may need to find other people to find solutions to their problems.
Cara Williams: We saw that the students had gone through quite an involved process, so they’d gone through lots of different design ideas and teased out all the challenges and I think that lead to a very sort of valuable experience.
Student4: So I though about having a shelter for a boat and that one, it’s basically just made out of glass…
Cara Williams: Although not all of them came up with an actual design solution. I think the most important thing that they took away was the fact that they had gone through the process and they’d really thought about the different challenges that designers have to consider.
The project really has allowed us to think quite differently about design teaching and I think it will allow us to model ways of working for other school in the future.