Hands-on design workshop for KS3 students to create a sustainable birdhouse for parakeets, led by Christie Swallow.
Young V&A is running Design Takeover, a hands-on studio workshop for KS3 students, starting Thursday 29 October at their Bethnal Green site. It's a 90-minute session run for registered schools, with each slot open to one class of around 25 students, up to 30 maximum. The whole programme runs on Thursdays through the autumn: 29 October, then 5, 12, 19 and 26 November, and 3 and 10 December 2026.
Leading the sessions is Christie Swallow, a designer, researcher and artist who graduated from the Royal College of Art in Environmental Architecture. She works through facilitation, making and spatial design, and over the next six months she's tackling the birdhousing crisis by co-creating sustainable avian architectures with young people. The starting point is Young V&A's collection of miniature habitats; the challenge for the students is to design a birdhouse for parakeets through architectural model-making, using the museum's own materials library.
The work takes place in The Shed, a dedicated studio built into the fabric of the Design Gallery. The gallery itself is a free permanent space that also hosts an annual six-month Design Placement, providing a bursary and studio space for early to mid-career designers. For schools visiting on the day, a 30-minute lunch slot is reserved in the Portal Trust Community Room, and a self-guided museum visit is available alongside the workshop.
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Each session runs from 10.30 to 12.00, and the cost is £150.00 per class.
