School post: The King John School

The following post is written by The King John School. As part of one of the top ten shortlisted schools this year, The King John School was invited to attend the Pitching Event. Here is their experience of the Design Ventura project so far…

You can read the full article here.

Year 9 team take part in the Ventura challenge

Our Year 9 Product Design students have recently been taking part in the Design Ventura challenge run by the Design museum. It’s been an exciting few weeks where students have worked in teams to design a product that would ‘make life easier.’ They have been  working hard researching, designing, modelling and developing their final products.

As only one team can go forward with their entry to the competition we held a pitching event at the school with Mr Sweeney, Mrs Rowe, Ms Johnson, Mr Murphy and Mrs Woodard on the panel of judges. Teams had three minutes to present their ideas and competition was fierce, with the lighting bolt repair kit ( a lighting bolt shaped reflective case that contains a puncture repair kit) emerging as the overall winner.

We were one of the top ten schools shortlisted for the competition with our four student team beating over 14,500 students who take part nationally and internationally.

The team travelled up to London to present their product to a panel of  design and business professionals. The team represented themselves well, answered tough questions from the judges and received some positive feedback about their product. The judges were truly impressed with the high standard and quality of both the ideas and the presentations and also the amount of development work that had been done in the short time since the shortlist was announced. They all felt that this year’s top ten had the most viable products of any previous year and so have a hard task in choosing a winner.

The winning team, will be announced in February 2018,  and will see its product concept developed and sold in the Museum’s shop with profits going to the school’s chosen charity. The work of all the shortlisted teams will be showcased at the Museum.

Well done to all our Year 9 product design students and good luck to team ‘Lighting repair’ Esther Frimpong, Scott Thompson, Luc Russell and Jasmine Dowdeswell with your entry!