5. Find your Materials for Design and Technology Project

This resource is part of the Tool Box series by AccessArt, which shares design and technology project ideas via a series of lesson plans.Find your materials for design and technology project and get making! A Video for Pupils

Please note this page contains videos housed on You Tube. If your school blocks You Tube AccessArt would be happy to provide an email to confirm the integrity of these videos. Please email us here. 

“Now we need to get making – and don’t forget you are “Designing through Making”, so keep your original idea in your head as your inspiration, but remember that it is through working with the materials and methods that your ideas will really develop.

Here’s a big secret! When adults are designing through making they don’t always know what they are doing! They start out with an idea, they get to work using the materials and then Ah! HA!, either something goes wrong and it doesn’t work quite as they hoped, or, even better, as they work they suddenly have a new idea! Honestly, this is fine! And a really important part of designing through making!

What matters, is that you stay focussed. That doesn’t mean following one idea through, all the way to the end. It means remembering the design brief (or Your Challenge) and keeping working towards it, and it means being open to see new possibilities or finding new solutions to your problems. We can really help you with this – so if at any point when you are working you get stuck, or have a new idea, do these things:

  • talk it through with your group (or even another group)
  • talk it through with a teacher or helper
  • share it with Tool Box – post it on the Tool Box website, either as a video or words, and we can send you a message back!
  • make a decision as to what to do…

So, go on, grab some materials and start to make what’s in your head!”

Top Tip: if you get stuck watch our videos about how to use tools, or how to construct

Next Visit:

Testing, Testing, Testing

This is a sample of a resource created by UK Charity AccessArt. We have over 1500 resources to help develop and inspire your creative thinking, practice and teaching.

AccessArt welcomes artists, educators, teachers and parents both in the UK and overseas.

We believe everyone has the right to be creative and by working together and sharing ideas we can enable everyone to reach their creative potential.