ReLight: Building confidence and iterative skills through creative recycled polymer projects
By Jenny Dhami, Summerhill School, Dudley
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There’s something electric about the GCSE NEA season, the classroom hums with the buzz of creativity. You’ll find students working across all material areas: metal, timbers, polymers, textiles, CADCAM. Each corner of the room tells a different story. It’s this variety that I absolutely love, but with it comes a unique challenge: confidence.
Confidence in the students, yes, but also confidence from the teacher. Confidence that, after years of teaching safe working practices, materials knowledge, manufacturing techniques and creative thinking, the students can now apply it all independently. Most of all, students need the confidence to take risks: to try, to fail, and to iterate and try again.
But how do you foster that kind of culture in a classroom of 20+ students, all at different ability levels, and with a constrained budget?
I needed a Year 10 module that could do all of that. A project that was hands on, iterative, and unafraid of failure; a real creative playground. I wanted students to get used to making mistakes and excited about iterating their ideas. And that’s when I came across the inspiring work of Brothers Make and Pat Link at Neston High School on the Wirral, who were inspiring the D&T community with a vast array of recycled projects including shredding and injection moulding HDPE bottle lids to create custom polymer components and beautiful products.
While I didn’t have access to the same kit, the idea sparked a thought: What could we do with the equipment we already have?
We began experimenting. First, we tried melting bottle lids in the oven and pressing them into a variety of handmade moulds. The results were interesting, but far too time consuming and the quality of the outcome was questionable. We turned to the heat press. That’s when the magic really began. We discovered we could melt and compress whole HDPE lids into colourful polymer sheets, some so thin you could cut them with tinsnips or a guillotine and then deform again through a secondary process. Even better, when held up to a phone light, the colours glowed. And with that, the sustainable ‘ReLight’ project was born.
Lighting Up Learning
The project starts a few months in advance with a challenge to collect HDPE bottle tops and a homework to visit the lighting section of a museum or shop such as IKEA. Students are shown how to safely reform the bottle tops into a polymer sheet, then later return at a set time to scan a QR code for a revisit of the demonstration, before manufacturing their own unique HDPE sheets.
Fast forward a couple of months and the project restarts with ideas. Students get 60 seconds to sketch a light shade inspired by a fast-paced deck of images, objects, nature and existing products. In 12 minutes, their sketchbooks are bursting with concepts. Then they build mini paper prototypes, pairing up to create at least six and hanging them on string to visualise in 3D.
Next comes the experimentation stage, our favourite. The perfect way to cover theory without realising you’re doing theory! Every work bench in the classroom becomes a station:
Wasting: Cutting strips and shapes from HDPE with tinsnips, scissors, guillotines, and craft knives.
Deforming:
Shaping using the oven and some simple timber formers (some strips did melt… and some melted twice—but never a third time!).
Shaping using a heat gun.
Creating angles on the line bender.
Scoring and bending.
Joining: Drilling and punching, and fastening with metal and polymer rivets, cutting slots for interlocking joints.
Finishing: Files and wet and dry paper, and polish.
In pairs, student rotate through the stations, taking photos and recording results. The focus is on learning through doing, exploring limitations, discovering possibilities, and figuring out techniques that work best.
Once the first round of HDPE experiments is done, we recycle and reform the material by reheating and pressing it into new sheets. This circular process reinforces sustainability while encouraging continued experimentation.
From Paper to Product
The next stage moves back into prototyping. Using cardboard (to mimic acrylic) and card (to mimic HDPE), students refine their designs based on their experimentations and test them on a real lighting pendant kindly donated by Dunelm, along with some old bulbs. They critique, adapt, and iterate.
Only then do they move to full size final prototypes and from there, into CADCAM. They measure their prototypes to create accurate CAD drawings, ensuring correctly sized holes for the lighting pendant and any joining components, then laser cut the acrylic parts. Back in the workshop, they manufacture their hand shaped HDPE elements and combine all components to bring their ReLight designs to life.
The results? Beautiful, functional, student led outcomes, each one the product of hands on making, creative iteration, and resilience.
This project doesn’t just teach students how to design and make. It teaches them to experiment, to reflect, to collaborate, to iterate and to persevere confidently. It shows them that design is a process, not just a product, and that failure is not the opposite of success, but part of how you get there.
What started with a polymer bottle lid turned into one of the most exciting and empowering modules loved by the students and teachers. It proves that with the right mindset and a bit of creative thinking, you don’t need a big budget to light the spark.
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