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rchitecture Aberrant Architecture

In an effort to motivate Welsh youth to consider a career in the arts, we partnered with Addo Creative, luxury sock maker Corgi and Ysgol Bro Dinefwr secondary school in the town of Llandeilo to create an art installation with a group of fifteen Year 8 students.

Over several months, we held 10 day-long workshop sessions with the students with the aim of teaching creative and technical skills by engaging them in architectural and design processes.

Beginning with site visits, research and development of making techniques, our young designers then sourced waste socks from Corgi’s production process which they re-appropriated as fabric moulds. By pouring plaster of Paris into the socks, they created a series of curvaceous forms that were stacked atop one another to build signposts that could be installed around the school grounds. After the signposts were erected, the students shared their design journey with a show-and-tell event at the school to mark the completion of the project.

Through this exercise, students were able to learn about creatively repurposing what would otherwise be discarded into objects that provoke conversation and consideration of our environment. Aside from highlighting the creativity of young people, the project increased the students’ sensitivity to the built environment while allowing them to develop skills that would otherwise be ignored by a mainstream academic curriculum. Our hope is that this exposure to the world of design, while under the guidance of professional architects, designers and fabricators, will encourage the students to connect with their own artistic potential and envision a future career in the creative sector.

The workshop was supported by the Lead Creative Schools Scheme under the Arts Council of Wales, which aims to form partnerships between schools and creative professionals. A short film of the creative journey is below.