Tech sessions with John Soane Museum

Week One.

Dragon Hall is working with young people who attend the Sir John Soane Museum as part of a 3 Week ‘build your own monument’ project.

The session began by having a discussion around monuments and what they stood for and how they were relevant. Young people mentioned different monuments in London and around the world that they were aware of.

Young people were then treated to a tour of the museum to look at some specific exhibits that would support their own design of a monument. We were discussing the structural composition, the meaning behind monuments and the name of the exhibits that could then be brought into their own design.

Upon our return from the museum we then worked on drawing our designs for 3D printing next week. Young people had multiple versions of their monuments due to the fact they had to consider the components of their build and how they would fit together to print.

Overall I think young people enjoyed their visit to the museum and can’t wait for next week to be back at Dragon Hall and ready to design their 3D prints.

Week 2

This week we worked on completing the young people’s 3D designs which went really well, we used a software called Tinkercad to create our designs and worked in groups of 15 to create our designs. This session was excellent – teaching young people new skills around computer aided design, negotiation and teamwork. For young people, they translated their drawn picture into a 3D design. Therefore it was good to see them letting out their creative ability to see what they could come up with.

We also had a few young people who were working to create their monument using clay this week, by doing this they were able understand what is realistic for their design and how it may look.

As the session started to wind down young people were happy with their finished product ready for them to be printed in the coming weeks.

At the end of the session young people from both Dragon Hall and the Sir John Soane Museum shared their work and gave feedback on what they thought and how they built it. This was a different yet beneficial session for the majority of the young people who wouldn’t typically get the opportunity to 3D print their own designs.

Now all we have to do is wait for June 6th, where the young people’s designs and their design journey will be on display in Dragon Hall for Parents to come and see what the young people have been able to achieve.

Keeley Reed, Youth Worker