Silverstone Innovation Centre holds ‘design challenge’ for schools
Silverstone Innovation Centre, a joint venture between the British Racing Drivers Club and the East Midlands Development Agency, managed by Oxford Innovation, held a ‘design challenge’ for schools in May 2008, allowing school students working in teams to design new products for the motorsport industry. This second year of the competition proved very popular, attracting entries from 13 teams of school students.
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School students from The National School, Nottingham; Queen Elizabeth Endowed School, Mansfield; Swinton Community School, Derbyshire and Northfleet Technology College, Kent, won the awards in the grand final of the design challenge, which was held at Silverstone Circuit. The shortlisted teams displayed their designs to invited guests before pitching their ideas to judging panels led by Nicky Grist (world rally champion and co-driver to Colin McCrae) and Pat Symonds (Renault’s executive director of engineering).
The Silverstone Innovation Centre Design Challenge was organised by Darren Giles, a Design Technology team at The National School, Nottingham, and Dianne Wilson, manager of Silverstone Innovation Centre.
Darren Giles said: “The students have really risen to the challenge and it has brought the whole curriculum to life for them. The teams produced impressive displays and presentations that were admired by our guests and impressed the judges. It has been a great collaboration with Silverstone Innovation Centre, whose support has made the Design Challenge possible.”
Dianne Wilson said: “Silverstone Innovation Centre is delighted to support the design challenge, which encourages entrepreneurship skills relevant to the motorsport industry at an early age. The students produced imaginative and exciting entries that really used their design technology skills and wowed the judges. We would particularly like to thank the judging panel for their excellent feedback to the teams and the East Midlands Development Agency (EMDA) and Northamptonshire Enterprise Ltd who have provided vital financial support for the competition, and we look forward to hosting an even bigger and better design challenge next year.”
The winners collected prizes that included: a tour of the Prodrive Subaru World Rally premises at Banbury for the overall winner; a day with Porsche at their new track at Silverstone; digital scalextric worth £200 each, design and production of F1 in schools uniform; £100 of HMV vouchers each, courtesy of Northamptonshire Enterprise, and a trip to Bletchley Park.
Additional prizes were donated by: BR Racing (a day at BR Racing, for the best team presentation) and Sarah Franklin Racing (a day at a race event to help prep her car, for the best visual presentation).
The Silverstone innovation centre is designed to house up to 40 high performance engineering start-up and growing companies and offers 30,000 sq. ft. of space with individual units ranging from under 200 sq. ft. to over 1,000 sq. ft.
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© Chilli Publishing Ltd 2008 |
1 JUN 2008 |
