First design sessions!

We have started off 88 Pianists with a bang! Our first design session took place at Hatfield Heath School in Cambridge where our engineer, Chris Cleaver from the University of Cambridge, began the day by presenting to nearly 100 children in an interactive assembly. The students immediately engaged with the project, and attempted to gather around the school’s piano in order to play it simultaneously! They collectively came to the conclusion that they would need to stand further away in order to get that many people to play it, and would need to design something in order to break the world record.

“Do you think we can do it?!” our engineer asked. “YES!” everyone shouted – and then they were off.

Through our planned activities, they explored ideas for mechanisms to play a piano key from a distance. They created and explored rhythmic patterns and melodies and played with the building blocks of different mechanisms, before applying these to their own ideas. We will reveal the designs they came up with later.

We’re absolutely thrilled by the way both the students and the teachers engaged with our aims. We can’t wait to see the children of Hatfield Heath for the next session, and meet all the children at the other 35 participating schools.