A product designed by a group of 13-16-year olds has gone on sale in the Design Museum shop following a national competition for schools.
This is the sixth year the London museum has run the Design Ventura design and enterprise competition, which challenges students in year 9, 10 and 11 to design a new product based on a real brief.
The winning team of six boys from Burnage Academy in Manchester designed Card Cogs in response to the theme of "connect". The plastic discs allow users to create structures from playing cards, and will retail at £9.95 with profits going to the Christie, an NHS cancer centre in Manchester.
More than 25,000 young people from across the UK have taken part in Design Ventura over the past five years. The competition is designed to improve students’ design skills and enterprise capabilities.
The museum said the competition also highlights the value of arts subjects, following the government’s election pledge that all secondary school pupils should take GCSEs in subjects that make up the English baccalaureate or EBacc – English, maths, science, a language and history or geography.
In a speech last month, the education secretary Nicky Morgan said core academic subjects at GCSE, allow young people to enter the widest ranges of careers and university courses.
“And let me be crystal clear, this isn’t because I think that the arts subjects are in any way less good or in any way less valuable,” she said. “What good schools… show is that there doesn’t need to be a false choice between an academic or an arts-based curriculum. You can do them both and you can do them both well.”
But in a statement, the Design Museum said it “urges the government to recognise the value of the arts subjects in delivering its ambitions for education”.
Steve Bentley, the head of design technology at Burnage Academy, said the students had gained transferable skills and considered real issues by taking part in the competition.
“It’s the first year we have entered and it has been a great learning experience for our students, the opportunity to apply 'real world' design and enterprise practice and venture outside of the classroom has been invaluable,” he said.
As well as designing the product, including sourcing material and product pricing, the Burnage team had to make a formal pitch presentation against nine other shortlisted schools to convince a panel of judges that their idea was viable to manufacture and market.
Design Ventura is run by the Design Museum in partnership with Deutsche Bank as part of its Born to Be youth engagement programme. Registration is now open for schools to take part in the 2015-16 Design Ventura with the theme of "move".
This is the sixth year the London museum has run the Design Ventura design and enterprise competition, which challenges students in year 9, 10 and 11 to design a new product based on a real brief.
The winning team of six boys from Burnage Academy in Manchester designed Card Cogs in response to the theme of "connect". The plastic discs allow users to create structures from playing cards, and will retail at £9.95 with profits going to the Christie, an NHS cancer centre in Manchester.
More than 25,000 young people from across the UK have taken part in Design Ventura over the past five years. The competition is designed to improve students’ design skills and enterprise capabilities.
The museum said the competition also highlights the value of arts subjects, following the government’s election pledge that all secondary school pupils should take GCSEs in subjects that make up the English baccalaureate or EBacc – English, maths, science, a language and history or geography.
In a speech last month, the education secretary Nicky Morgan said core academic subjects at GCSE, allow young people to enter the widest ranges of careers and university courses.
“And let me be crystal clear, this isn’t because I think that the arts subjects are in any way less good or in any way less valuable,” she said. “What good schools… show is that there doesn’t need to be a false choice between an academic or an arts-based curriculum. You can do them both and you can do them both well.”
But in a statement, the Design Museum said it “urges the government to recognise the value of the arts subjects in delivering its ambitions for education”.
Steve Bentley, the head of design technology at Burnage Academy, said the students had gained transferable skills and considered real issues by taking part in the competition.
“It’s the first year we have entered and it has been a great learning experience for our students, the opportunity to apply 'real world' design and enterprise practice and venture outside of the classroom has been invaluable,” he said.
As well as designing the product, including sourcing material and product pricing, the Burnage team had to make a formal pitch presentation against nine other shortlisted schools to convince a panel of judges that their idea was viable to manufacture and market.
Design Ventura is run by the Design Museum in partnership with Deutsche Bank as part of its Born to Be youth engagement programme. Registration is now open for schools to take part in the 2015-16 Design Ventura with the theme of "move".