Key Stage 3
Design and Technology, History and Art
Historic Royal Palaces in partnership with Graveney School
The teacher wanted to increase student:
- knowledge of the importance of conservation
- aspiration for quality design
- observation skills and creativity
White Tower project work on display at Wolverhampton Art Gallery © CABE
In this project students from Tooting in south London were challenged to create textiles inspired by the White Tower in the Tower of London. They took all the decisions about the kind of object they would create, the design ideas and the detailed finishes themselves. It was a new and stimulating experience for the class to use an historic structure like the White Tower as the inspiration for design work. The class enjoyed the work so much they spent many of their lunchtimes developing their products. Every student in the class took their design through to completion.
A great incentive was offered by the prospect of creating something that would be sold in the gift shop of the Tower itself. From the earliest stages some of the class were imagining the mass production of their designs and a long and profitable future for their ideas!
Visiting the Tower was an important moment in the project. This day brought many surprises. The class had not anticipated the scale and the grandeur of the building, and afterwards many of them described how important the visit had been. The students found it inspiring not only to see the place, but to touch the walls and the other materials and to get an intimate physical sense of the real building. The class took all of their experiences and transformed them into finished textiles, ranging from oven mitts to iPod holders, each with their own unique character.
Read more about how this project developed.
