A group of interior design students developed conceptual schemes for an outdoor play area at the National Waterways Museum.
The client, Canal and River Trust, wanted fresh ideas for the play area to boost the number of families visiting the museum. UCLan’s Student Enterprise Hub matched the client’s needs with the skills of third year students from UCLan’s BA (Hons) Interior Design course.
Using the latest technology, visitors to the National Waterways Museum can experience what it was like to live and work on waterways over the last 200 years. The client was eager for this history to inform the students’ concepts.
Supported by their lecturer, Pam Eccles, students Kajal Parekh, Sarah Taleb-Bendiab, Natalie Brown, Abigail Bailey, Ben Hunter, Kirsty Fisher, Gholamreza Moradi, Tim McDonagh and Amina Gurjee had a tight timeframe to design their concepts, ensuring they were conceivable with the museum’s budget and fit with the historical surroundings.
Ben Hunter said: “This was a great thing to work on - it was a live project, it’s more industry experience and I can now go to other companies and say, ‘look what I’ve done.’”
Graham Boxer, Head of Museums at Canal and River Trust, was impressed by the students’ output: “In under four weeks the students were able to visit the site, come up with a scheme and pull together all of the visuals and suggested specifications necessary to develop a tender brief.”
The playground should be built this summer and the students have been invited to witness its grand opening.
The Student Enterprise Hub enables students to respond to business challenges with innovation and creativity, find out more about the Student Enterprise Hub