Students in Senior Primary at Matthew Flinders Anglican College were fortunate to experience the 2021 Design for Impact Summit over two days in Term 2.
Students in Years 5 and 6 embraced the challenge to design a new world-class city from the ground up! Their mission was to imagine, design and prototype a smart, healthy, happy and sustainable Maroochydore City Centre for 2050.
The immersion experience was presented for the second year running as a partnership with Queensland University of Technology Design Lab and experts in design.
A short video of the Summit highlights is shared here.
The city planning challenge was based on real demographic data that notes:
- the Sunshine Coast is one of the fastest growing regions in Australia;
- for the first time in history, the majority of the world’s population lives in cities; and
- by 2050 it is estimated that three quarters of the world’s population will live in cities.
Head of Primary Mrs Trudi Edwards said Flinders was committed to being a leading school in design thinking.
“This is the second year in a row that Flinders has hosted the Design for Impact Summit and challenged our students to look at the world differently,” Trudi said.
“Working in collaborative teams, our students were asked to be ‘future thinkers’,” she said. "Their task was to imagine, design and prototype a better Maroochydore City Centre for 2050.
“This is all part of our College’s aim to give our students from Prep to Year 6 diverse and rich opportunities to experience first-hand the energy, excitement and possibility of design thinking.”
The students created prototypes for a Maroochydore City Centre for 2050, and the results were awe-inspiring!
Each student team was given a large-scale 3-D cardboard base cut-out of a different precinct as part of the greater city.
With an abundance of recycled construction material - including cardboard, craft paper, sticky tape, glue guns, glitter and string - the students set about building small-scale models of their ultimate city precinct.
Once the precincts were completed with 3-D design features, the pieces were fitted together to construct a large-scale model of the future city.
Thanks went to Ted O'Brien MP, Federal Member for Fairfax for officially opening the future city - cutting the ribbon to signify the students' 2050 City as a small-scale model open for business!
Mrs Edwards thanked Dr Natalie Wright for leading the project with the Flinders team, and the wonderful facilitators who visited and gave so generously of their time, passion and expertise.
The Flinders staff team also went above and beyond to make the Summit an amazingly positive and engaging experience for our students.
The Summit immersion is gaining serious traction in the wider academic community and Flinders is thrilled to be a part of this practical research.
To learn more about the event, read last year's event wrap-up with the 2020 Design Summit wrap-up or watch the 2021 Summit video highlights here.
