Bexhill College Your Town Engineering Project

25 March

Culture Shift, a Lewes – based arts and education charity, is running a project to get students in schools and colleges coming up with innovative ideas to improve their town or the world they live in as part of a Royal Academy of Engineering funded programme called Your Town Engineers.  On Wednesday of last week two groups of students from Bexhill College presented their ideas online to a small panel of experts. The groups had been supported by tech specialist Factory Internet and Culture Shift to develop ideas over a 6 week period as an extra-curricular project. Students spanned arts and science subjects.

The student ideas included team Bexhill Info-Tech designing smart information screens to communicate local information to tourists and to those who don’t have access to a smart phone. The screens would suggest good walks around the town, places to eat, information about bus routes etc. The screens would be situated in a purpose-built installation with 3 screens available in any one place (see picture) and be financed through local advertising. Students were keen to see competitions to help design the structures and logos.

The second team Sneaker Snap tackled the challenges around online shopping arising through the pandemic.  With a strap line of `helping Bexhill residents purchase good fitting and stylish shoes online’, they created an app that made use of augmented reality to bring a whole new essence of convenience to the world of online shopping. Their design proposed using images and measurements of people’s feet combined with data collected from manufacturers and retailers about their products, to give consumers an idea and understanding of how a shoe would look and fit.

Students presented their ideas confidently online to a virtual panel including Councillor Michael Ensor, Melanie Powell, Regeneration lead for Rother District Council, Ashley McCormick, Head of Learning and Participation at the De La Warr Pavilion, Shawn Ross-Vidal, Jo Saxby and Glen Douche from Factory Internet, Hastings and Lord Lucas, a mentor to the project and keen advocate for opening up careers in engineering to young people.

It was a pleasure to be part of the panel yesterday. What a fabulous group of students, and they did so well in presenting their ideas - Cllr Ensor

Really impressive range of ideas and very much blown away by level of detail - Software Engineer, Factory Internet

Really great to see the teams pull together to deliver their pitches at such a high standard. The students handled questions very well and there was great engagement from the panel as well, Zoe Mills, Bexhill College

For more info contact Sarah Hinks, Careers and Skills Lead at Culture Shift on mobile 07703785947 or email sarah@cultureshift.org.uk

For more information on Engineering at Bexhill College click here.