The Saturday Club
What would have better prepared you for a career in the Visual Arts?
The National Art&Design Saturday Club offers young people aged 14–16 the unique opportunity to study art and design every Saturday morning at their local college or university for free. They are provided with 100 hours of art and design tuition for FREE and also given an incredible opportunity to attend a Masterclass with one of the UK's foremost artists or designers, sometimes in their own studio or workspace. If you can, I would urge you to support this fantastic programme or perhaps get your children involved!
This year I was fortunate to be invited to collaborate with Paul Priestman of PriestmanGoode to provide a Masterclass for Bolton University Saturday Club. PriestmanGoode's expertise in transportation design led to a brief to 'design a spaceship for a family travelling to outer space for a one-week holiday'.
By imagining the practicalities of domestic life in outer space, the students working in teams developed their ideas on paper and then built cardboard models to presented their designs to the rest of the group. The day was great fun and the students demonstrated excellent creativity and dreamt up some wonderful innovative solutions to the problems of living in space. The brilliant team I worked with decided to provide facilities for the family's wheelchair bound grandmother and also a pet dog - it led to some novel design features.
The Saturday Club is a Sorrell Foundation initiative that nurtures talent, builds confidence and raises aspirations. It helps young people gain qualifications and gives them an insight into studying at college or university and an understanding of careers in the creative industries. An average of 30% of Club members progress on to diploma, foundation or undergraduate courses.
Now in its sixth year, the Saturday Club runs in 41 locations across the UK, in colleges, universities and at the Victoria and Albert Museum. If you can, visit the Summer Show at the Embankment Galleries, Somerset House, London and see the spaceships for yourself.
Images courtesy of The Sorrell Foundation / Kit Oates.