On June 22nd, 2021, all members of the BEST fund including LDPi arrived at the Madao Primary School in Liuba Shaanxi for the 13th BEST Fund teaching exchange.

In addition to the interesting English lessons taught by teachers from GIRAFFE, this time kids grade 4 to 6 had their first lighting design lesson.

“Design” is a subject which is too massive to be explained in 40 minutes. So kids were asked to imagine and design the lighting for their own school where they learn and participate in activities everyday.

Prior to starting the design, kids had a chance to see through pictures what emotion lighting could bring in addition to its normal function. There were cases comparing before and after renovation projects, exisiting and new projects.

Before and after the lighting renovation

Using photos, the kids understood the different types of lighting used as a make-up layer over the architectural layer.

Students worked in pairs for the manual lighting design on a piece of tracing paper overlapped on the original colored facade prepared in advance. When the pair overlapped the final 2 layers, their lighting effect could be envisioned.

Draft

Facade design&Lighting design

The overlapped effect

All students listened carefullyand surprised by the photos sometime. 

Children are born to be designers, and we were lucky to see the freedom of their imagination through their design.

A brown facade which matches well with the green plant.

There were also wild designs with “red lights highlighting green trees”. The three primary colors were mainly used in the lighting design that closely followed the building’s architectural structure. Spotlights were used in the corridors and colorful linear lights on the facade to light up structures and logos on the wall.

Colorful and childlike.The corridor is lit up by the warm yellow/white light and the logo wall is decorated by the blue string lights. The blue and pink colors help differentiating the floors.

A facade with the colors of a rainbow.

After the redesign, Liuba has the scenery of “green tree and red wall”.Even with such a limited time, all the students finished their designs that went beyond the imagination and the expectation of the BEST fund team members. Furthermore, they understood a completely new content that was presented to them and were able to incorporate it in their own design work.

We visited their art work exhibition room after the design lesson.

They used plain materials to describe the distant stars at the foot of mountains.

Madao school won many art awards.

We didn’t teach the students design as a kind of knowledge, but as a way to inspire them, hoping to arousing their perception, expression and imagination. Making the “Design” as a window that kids could have to watch the world beyond Liuba.

Gardenia that the students handed, enthusiastic performance in the English lessons and amazing redesign work they made, so much surprise they gave to us that day. Everyone of them is so vibrant like the bloom under the summer sunshine, the light in their eyes is telling that the mountain should not be the boundary of their life which is exactly the original intention of BEST Fund “Winged Children’s Dream”, let them fly to a wider world.