Early in October, Pooran and Cat made the journey to Warwickshire to attend the Design and Technology Association Excellence Awards. OnePlanet was lucky enough to sponsor one of the awards for the evening, The OnePlanet Excellence Award for Outstanding Industry Engagement (Industry Partner), which we presented to the winner on the night.
It was a fantastic evening hosted at the British Motor Museum, we got to explore the cars and other vehicles on display before heading upstairs for the awards and meal. The room was gorgeous, with a glass roof so the night sky could watch over us. We were told that the Northern Lights may be visible that evening, sadly we didn’t see them, but the award winners were wonderful enough.
The winner of the award we sponsored, Morgan Gore who works at Jaguar Landrover in their Global Eduction and Outreach team, was sat at our table. Alongside Morgan, her colleague Sandra Kinyanjui, Ryan Ball from the D&T Association, and Trudi Barrow who works as a Design and Technology Adviser at CLEAPSS provided excellent company throughout the evening.
In between awards we were served excellent food and even greater conversations around sustainability, design, education, AI, inclusivity, the intersection of all of these things, and much more.
Some standout moments include the awards that were presented to teachers of D&T as well as outstanding D&T students, it was an honour to learn about what these people had achieved within their field. We also were given a fascinating keynote speech by Navjot Sawhney from The Washing Machine Project who highlighted the burden of unpaid labour, specifically the labour of handwashing clothes, that occurs all over the world.
Many thanks to the Design and Technology Association for inviting us to attend the awards. We had a wonderful evening.