EDUCATION SPOTLIGHT
Full STEAM Ahead THE NEW DYSON STEAM BUILDING AT GRESHAM’S LETS STUDENTS INTEGRATE ART AND DESIGN ALONGSIDE TYPICAL STEM FARE A CREATIVE APPROACH
n September 2021, Gresham’s opened the new Dyson STEAM Building on its campus in North Norfolk, following an £18.75 million donation from former Gresham’s pupil Sir James Dyson. STEAM – standing for science, technology, engineering, arts and maths – differs from the more familiar idea of STEM, which groups technical and scientific subjects together. It’s a great development for the school, but there’s an underlying idea that underpins the building’s conception. Schoolchildren are traditionally asked to choose options quite early for the subjects they will study later on. The result of this early decision making has been a natural divide between the sciences and the arts. Children of 16 are asked to make a firm choice about their future pathway. STEAM challenges this narrative by placing art and design at the heart of a technical building, and those that are studying technical subjects should also have a clear sense of creativity in their approach. Happily, no one in modern Britain exemplifies this better than Sir James Dyson. He left Gresham’s intending to be a fine artist, attending art college before becoming interested in design, which led him ultimately to founding the groundbreaking engineering company we know today. His determination not to accept the standard division between the arts and sciences is perhaps what marks him out as exceptional. With the Dyson Building open, Gresham’s pupils have been able to use and enjoy the facilities for the first time. The uptake for extracurricular STEAM activities increased, enabling pupils to tinker and discover new ways of working. Students have built VEX robots and entered regional competitions; painted with chemistry experiments; designed, built and raced electric cars; and even used computing to code a character for a drama performance. For last year’s production of
Little Shop of Horrors , animatronic Audrey II was created through a collaboration between the drama, art and computing departments. Pupils and staff fitted a web server to the plant pot, allowing them to control this unique character. The Dyson Building continues to inspire young minds, as Gresham’s pupils have time and space to engage in creative projects. In the process, they take different approaches to problem solving, learn to work collaboratively with others, start to understand how to turn an idea into reality and develop their decision-making skills. There’s no doubt this will be important throughout their lives and future careers. Gresham’s is an independent, co-educational day and boarding school for pupils aged two to 18. The next open mornings are Friday 28 April (Prep) and Saturday 29 April (Senior)
STEAM places art and design in the heart of a technical building
REMOTE POSSIBILITIES Students race remote- controlled cars of their own design – just one extracurricular activity offered this year
CAMBSEDITION.CO.UK DECEMBER 2022 83
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