The Urban Crew is a successful collaboration between MCA and Northwards Housing that has been running for eight years in its present format. We work with local primary schools across North Manchester to engage Year 5 & 6 pupils in a citizenship programme where they complete a number of activities which must be evidenced in order to achieve an ASDAN accreditation. We now have 14 primary schools taking part with a combined total of 140 students.
Across two Friday’s in March, all 140 Urban Crew members joined us for a “Design-a-thon” hosted by Mike Mead of Create Education and MCA technical staff Mr Cretney and Mr McCrory, supported by three of our Y9 school ambassadors .
Mike began with a PowerPoint presentation explaining some of the technologies behind 3D Printing and some of the potentials. The crews were then tasked with coming up with their own innovative Urban Crew design that could be 3D printed and transform a plastic bottle from a piece of rubbish into something useful. The crew with the winning design would then be taking back to school a brand new state of the art Ultimaker 3D Printer donated by Create Education!
The crews came up with some fantastic designs including bird feeders, water butts, pencil holders and school badges.
After a quick break for lunch the groups listened to Create’s Mike explain how the designs could be tweaked, modified and jazzed-up. The crews rushed off to add some finishing touches before preparing to present their ideas and designs to Mike, who clipboard in hand, was to be the judge.
Finally, the crews were assembled for the judge’s verdict and Mike declared Christ the King and the following week St Mary’s to be the winners. Each school were ecstatic to receive their very own 3D printer for their school with the support from Mr Cretney & Mr McCrory to get them set up.
We would like to thank all the crews who attended and all the staff who supported the event from the participating primary schools and MCA. Also our thanks once again to Mr Cretney and Mr McCrory for their expert and invaluable support. Thanks also to our excellent school ambassadors. And finally, we would especially like to thank Mike Mead and his colleagues at Create Education for a wonderful two days and their very generous donation of two 3D printers.