Making of an artwork designed by Tal Baltuch for Lola Marsh’s debut album Remember Roses.

Off-grid communities such as those in sub-Saharan Africa can pay thousands of times as much as the rest of us for their energy. Designer Jim Reeves has developed a simple, low-cost gear-train and generator that uses a descending weight to power a perpetual light source. Children can do their homework and study, families and friends can eat together and interact after dark adding new dimensions and possibilities to their lives.

“Go straight off the wall” said his dad and Dominic does just that. The film follows Dominic Wilcox, an artist / inventor / designer, on his quest for new ideas….Transforming the mundane and ordinary into something surprising, wondrous and strangely thought provoking.

Watch this video and find out about one of our recent DesignLab projects, a collaboration between V&A Schools, Heatherwick Studio and Whitecross High School in Hereford. The project aimed to showcase Heatherwick Studio’s extraordinary and cross-disciplinary approach to working, as well as model how to use the V&A’s collections to answer contemporary design briefs.

DesignLab is a programme of projects that explore new ways of engaging students with design. It brings schools together with museum educators, practising designers and the museum’s collections to work on projects and engage in CPD activities.

Students acquire new and transferable skills, knowledge, curiosity and tons of inspiration. Teachers’ classroom practice and creativity is enriched through access to working with contemporary creative practitioners, museum staff and the V&A’s unrivalled collection of art, design and performance.

DesignLab aims to inspire a new generation of creative practitioners as well as broaden young people’s understanding of the designed world around them, how it is made and its impact on society and the environment.