By Natasha B, Year 11 Journalist Leader

On 21st September, DT students from Year 11-13 visited the London Design Festival to get inspiration for our GCSE and A-level projects. We first visited an exciting pop up exhibition called Material Matters at the Oxo tower. This place was a warehouse with different setups on different floors full of designers with unique ideas that were based around the theme sustainable materials. Some of the highlights from this place included a company which made clothes out of 95% recycled scraps and another which made food bowls made out of crisp packets! Another company which stood out was called The Good Plastic Company. This company was displaying their “polygood panels,” which were made out of post-consumer and industrial waste sources such as old electronics, single-use cutlery and household items. Many of us were also very happy to see they were giving out free sample blocks so we could take home a physical copy. It was amazing to see how waste could be made into something like this and know that everyday items we have to inevitably throw away can be repurposed into a new material. More installations that caught our eyes were a light, table and chair set made out of coloured bands and tiles made out of shoe soles, wasted seashells and organic bacterial cellulose! 

After exploring the many floors that were on offer, we then walked to our next location (after a scenic walk along the Southbank) to a workshop which was deemed very popular in our class called “Are you Mad?” Here, they collect plastic waste such as water bottles and packaging (including the free Lucozade bottles we picked up en route) and use an injection moulding machine to turn them into new products. They do this by shredding the plastic into fine granules before heating and injecting it into different moulds to repurpose it into new products. As this was explained to us, many of us got the opportunity to use this machine and see it in action to produce mini Nike symbols for each of us to keep. We were told some astonishing facts including how they can collect up to 10,000 bottle caps from just one football stadium on a match day and these are recycled into keepsake items which are sold to raise money for purchasing more recycling machinery.

The final place we visited was the Victoria and Albert museum where we took part in a hunt around the museum and as well as this had the opportunity to sit in on a lecture. The lecture discussed AI in design and how human creativity is more important than ever along with a panel of designers to answer questions. After that we got into groups and were given five pictures of exhibits we had to find from around the museum. During this we got to see all of the things the museum had to offer to find inspiration for our projects. Even though my group had some funny navigational problems where we ended up in a Coco Chanel exhibit on a completely different floor, it was a very fun activity and a fun way to end the day! My advice for future DT students going to the V&A is to get a map!

Thank you to the DT department for organising this trip for us!