ALT awards competition- sourcing slate from the lakes

Jenny Hodgeman’s winning design from the Association of Learning Technology (ALT) competition took Jenny to the Honister slate mines this summer to source more of this beautiful material which reflects the green colours of ALT.

Jenny is a L4 student on the Contemporary Design Crafts B.A (Hons) course at HCA. Her winning design was selected partly because of its careful thought to material and how the heritage and tangibility of slate works to communicate ideas of how analogue works in dialogue with digital. Jenny’s research into materials was particularly commended, as is her research into binary code during her design process. The natural green of the slate is extraordinarily beautiful, mirroring the landscape of the Lakes and the perfect material for this design.

Jenny is laser-cutting the code into the slate in our workshops at HCA. She is also using sandblasting techniques – placing the date on the awards ready to ship them to Manchester for the Learning technologist of the Year presentation ceremony at the Association of Learning Technology Conference.

The slate also has lovely tactile qualities, making it a great choice for an award which celebrates people working with digital technology, whose work has tremendous impact but is also intangible. Bringing a physical element to the awards was the idea of Dr Maren Deepwell, Chief Executive of ALT, who we welcomed to HCA this year to announce the competition opportunity to our degree level students.