Reflections on The First Semester

The first semester is always a busy one for our first years; there is so much to learn.  We have already posted a blog about what the students have been up to in the drawing class, which was delivered one day a week, and as well as this they have been working fifteen hours a week learning basic skills at the forge, including making tongs and punches, two and a half hours a week learning basic fabrication and welding and they have also been introduced to all of our other workshops, where we have been exploring a range of other materials that will be useful both in terms of maquette making and possibly component pieces of their final outcomes.

It has been a real opportunity to experiment as we start the module by introducing students to a range of key verbs that they can apply to testing and exploring materials, such as bending, folding, twisting, stretching, punching.   The focus is on lots of material experimentation and asking “what if”.  Having done a wide range of experiments, students are asked to focus on one verb and explore a range of experiments through a range of other materials, including forge samples, and here are some of the results.  Their desks are full of intriguing and exciting samples as they build up a vocabulary of material possibilities that can be applied to future design and make projects.