Local curriculum in technology using a light festival

Community links with local curriculum 

Rebecca Lund is the technology workshop teacher at Wakatipu High School. She became the festival's schools’ coordinator in its second year and offered workshops to Queenstown primary schools. Rebecca taught teachers and students construction skills for the schools’ installation. She made suggestions for curriculum links. The workshops engaged teachers and students in the project. 

In subsequent years, primary schools collect a brief from Rebecca. Rebecca and the schools meet to discuss progress, outcomes, and stakeholder feedback. 

Using the festival in class 

Primary school 

Remarkables Primary STEAM teacher Sarah Washbrooke develops a variety of programmes of learning around the festivals. 

Sarah is a STEAM advocate. She believes this approach acknowledges that technology draws on multiple disciplines. For example 3D printed sea creatures were developed during a school-wide health and wellbeing focus.  

Secondary school 

Rebecca uses the festival installations for students to investigate: 

• digital technologies 
• design and stakeholder requirements 
• materials outcomes

The students gain skills and use multiple pieces of workshop equipment. 

LUMA Festival 

LUMA: Southern Light Project is a popular, Queenstown community, light festival first held in 2016. LUMA takes place on Queen’s birthday weekend. It runs for four evenings of illuminated art sculptures and entertainment. LUMA has a particular theme each year. Sustainability is always part of the theme. 

Community links with local curriculum 

The Queenstown Gardens were 150 years old in the festival’s second year. Over 150 students from Wakatipu High School, Shotover Primary School, Queenstown Primary School, and Arrowtown Primary School manufactured 150 flowers to light up the garden beds.  

Technology local curriculum 

Students saw the electronics used in the flowers. They gained an all round understanding of the design process and modelling a prototype that was fit for purpose. 

Image by Jonny James, Storyworks, courtesy of LUMA Southern Light Project. 

Luminescent 3D printed sea creatures 

Theme inspiration 

Sustainability, reusing and recycling plastics within a sea theme of jellyfish was chosen in the festival's third year. The inspiration for the theme came from an image a student saw of turtles ingesting plastic bags they thought were jellyfish.  

The installation alerted the audience to the ongoing issues around plastic sustainability and its effects on marine life and the ocean. 

The installation involved students from Remarkables Primary and Shotover Primary Schools.

The brief 

The designers asked students from Remarkables Primary School to develop outcomes for the theme, which: 

• had visual impact 
• would look aesthetically pleasing when hung 1-3 metres in the air 
• had tentacles in which LED lights could be hung. 

Designing to the brief 

Groups of students created many design iterations. The stakeholders provided ongoing feedback before approving a final design. Stakeholders were the schools’ coordinator Rebecca, electricians, the festival designers, and Shotover Primary. 

Developing the brief 

The students and stakeholders agreed to certain specification constraints as the brief developed. This meant students had to use a paper lantern base, and a spherical, elliptical shape. 

Students could change the shape by overlaying translucent material. They could create their own design for the tentacles, but this had to be done with translucent material. 

Creating the jellyfish 

Translucent binding, strapping, ribbon, and packaging beads were sourced from local businesses, at no cost. The students experimented with different types of LED lights in their jellyfish. 

Technology local curriculum 

The students learnt about brief development – specification constraints and stakeholder feedback. 

A focus on materials (technological products) included testing and trialling materials and recycling materials. Students explored material properties like what performance properties – translucent, transparent, or opaque – were the most effective for their designs. 

Image by Simon Holden, courtesy of LUMA Southern Light Project. 

Community links with local curriculum 

In the festival’s third year Wakatipu High School year 9 students created life-size silhouettes of many of New Zealand’s extinct birds. The creations included a bush moa, Haast's eagle pouākai, and Finsch’s duck. 

The students outlined their shapes and painted patterns using UV paint, which showed up under black light. 

After the festival the Otago Peninsula Trust asked Rebecca and the students if they would contribute to the Glenfalloch Night Garden with silhouettes to support their albatross colony work. 

Technology learning area 

The students explored brief development and developed skills to create the birds. 

They worked with feedback to meet stakeholder requirements. 

The brief 

In year four the primary and secondary schools worked together. The installation included work from Queenstown primary schools, and year 9 work from Wakatipu High School. The LUMA festival directors made the sustainability theme more demanding. The outcomes had to: 

• be lanterns from a plastic pipe offcut from a building project 
• be eye-catching and interesting (aesthetically pleasing) 
• incorporate a geometric shape and pattern 
• be able to be developed into another product for LUMA next year – they asked the students to think of it as a two or three year project 
• be able to fit lighting inside 
• be completed and ready to be installed by a set date. 

The festival directors wanted the public to work the lighting effects rather than passively wandering through the installation. Students learnt about the different lighting types available for the display. The lights connected to sound, and motion sensors or required switches to be located and turned on.  

Communicating with stakeholders 

Year 6 students 

Remarkables Primary students asked questions of stakeholder Rebecca to refine their designs. 

A new garden meant the lanterns needed to hang in a tree. Students learnt about adjusting designs to match stakeholder changing needs. 

Year 9 students 

The festival designers came to school every six weeks, or provided feedback via Rebecca. 

Feedback included congratulating the students on original ideas the festival designers hadn’t considered, and discarding ideas that didn’t fit with the festival vision, or wouldn’t work in the festival setting. 

The project provided an effective, authentic learning opportunity for students about designing and creating to meet stakeholders' requirements. 

Designing to the brief 

Year 6 students 

Remarkables Primary School students looked at patterns and thought about symmetry, fractals, and measurement. Tube patterns explored included shapes: 

• linked to the environment such as leaves 
• linked to the LUMA festival 
• that were geometric 
• reflective of a particular culture. 

Year 9 students 

The students designed ideas to meet the brief. They voted to select the best idea to share with the festival designers. 

Rebecca provided opportunities for skill building. These included how to measure accurately and use multiple pieces of workshop equipment. Equipment used included the bandsaw, scroll saw, files, and the drill press. 

Festival lanterns 

Ten year 9 students worked alongside the designers and electricians installing the lanterns. 

See the recycled lanterns being installed in this LUMA video, LUMA19 Bright Sparks.

See the lanterns in the festival in this TVNZ news clip. Sustainability highlighted at LUMA Southern Light Project in Queenstown. 

Image by Aiste Photography, courtesy of LUMA Southern Light Project