The Rolls-Royce Enthusiasts Club parked their Rolls-Royce and Bentley cars outside the front of the Senior school for a morning last week. This gave our Design and Technology and Photography pupils the chance to study the cars, speak to the owners and take up-close photographs of the luxury automobiles. For our DT pupils in particular, the opportunity to see the way design influences the quality of such high-quality products was particularly inspiring.
Director of Design and Technology, James Buxton, said: “The pupils thoroughly enjoyed it and responded really well to having the cars at the school. The car owners are so passionate about their cars and were happy to answer quite technical questions from our pupils.
“I think for the pupils, seeing the cars in real life gives them so much more insight than just seeing photos or videos of them. For instance, being able to touch and notice the way things like the branding has been used throughout the car. It’s these small design features which can make all the difference. It’s a real-world example of how design is everywhere and getting pupils to notice this is something we focus on.”
Teacher of Design and Technology, Adrian Bloore, formerly completed an apprenticeship with Rolls-Royce as part of his engineering career and said it brought back a lot of memories to see the model of car he worked on in real life, 30 years later.
Mr Buxton added: “One of our pupils is renovating an old VW beetle himself in his garage and we made sure that he could get some good advice from some of the owners. It seems many of the owners of the cars which came into the school did lots of work themselves on their cars and were happy to speak to our pupils about this.”
We would like to thank the Rolls-Royce Enthusiasts Club for giving our pupils this unique opportunity.
