Interviewer:
This is St Andrews and St Bride’s High School in South Lanarkshire. We have Keiran down here who’s going to explain exactly what their project is.
Pupil:
We’re doing a workstation like office desks and desktops for the Scottish Parliament.
Interviewer:
This is your design from start to finish up on the wall here behind us, so talk us through that.
Pupil:
First of all I done the research, as you can see. I done design brief and aesthetics and ergonomics and then I done the design. The design’s to see what my table would have looked like. Then I developed them and I chose an idea and that’s my idea there.
Interviewer:
So that’s the way it’s going to look, the final idea is down at the bottom there. I don’t know if you can see that, just right there.
And Peter this is your school, you know pretty much what’s going on in the department here and the scope that is going on here. What age group are we looking at here?
Teacher:
We’re looking at S3 pupils here so we’re dealing with 14-15 year olds. The first year of the Standard Grade Craft and Design. What we are trying to do here is something different within the curriculum. We’re trying to give them the impression, that shape, again going back to Perth and Kinross, shape drives a design. We’re looking at not using traditional materials, we’re modelling this. So rather than getting out full-size materials, having to spend a whole load of time on this, we can concentrate on a design style of this. We can look at the aesthetic factors, so we are actually using scale models, scale figurines and putting them into situ.
Interviewer:
This one over here, this looks very, I don’t know if you can see here, I’m sure many of you will recognise this here which is obviously one of the window frames and one of the window units of the Scottish Parliament, so this is obviously the designing. I don’t know who that is, is it Jack McConnell? No he can’t dance like that. But they are clearly designing for use in the Scottish Parliament for one of the offices for one of the ministers I take it?.
Teacher:
Absolutely, I think this is a one in five scale, if I can bring one of my colleagues in, Miss Muir?
Interviewer:
Miss Muir is on her way over. If you just stand here Miss Muir. So we’re just talking about what we’re doing here and the fact we’re making, designing these tables for the Scottish Parliament, what’s the idea behind that?.
Teacher 2:
The idea is to give it some meaning to the project so they can visualise where they are actually going. We took them for a visit to the Scottish Parliament so that they can actually see where things are going to go, and a bit of national pride in there as well.
Interviewer:
When I was at school I remember you would do something and go “What am I doing this for? But clearly there is a reason for this.
Teacher 2:
It gives it a point to it so they can actually see, and the fact that we’ve made the scale model means they can interact with it quite easily and visualise much more easily what their products would look like in the end.
Interviewer:
There’s one of the tables, if you just have a wee look at that. There’s one of the tables being put in there. That looks like a desk fit for a minister.
Teacher 2:
Yeah, well they took pictures of the Scottish Parliament and there’s themes throughout the architecture like the shapes they’ve got in the middle and the leaf shapes. It also means the materials they use are Scottish, so they’ve done a lot of research on that as well.
Interviewer:
So that looks like a finished product to me but you’ve only been at it for just over an hour, actually, you’ve got another two hours to go.
Teacher 2:
They change them as they’re going. Actually, half way through, they do drawings and designs and then halfway through they might change their mind. They’ll have a product and then they’ll do another one and make certain changes to it as well.
Interviewer:
I would like one where a cup of coffee come up from there warm, ready to drink, in a clean cup and then goes back down, washes the cup and comes back up. Could you organise that for me?
Teacher 2:
Some of the MSP might quite like that as well!
Interviewer:
You’ve got a winner if you design that. Thanks very much
Thank you. Cheers.