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Happy Birthday Brunel! 2006 sees the bi-centenary of the birth of Britain's most feted engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Throughout the country, people are looking at his feats of engineering with fresh appreciation. From the Clifton Suspension Bridge and the Thames Tunnel, to the Great Western Railway and SS Great Britain, Brunel was never one to shy away from challenges of epic proportions.
For those of you working in education, tasked with inspiring, equipping and assessing the designers engineers of tomorrow, Brunel is, without a doubt, an inspiration and reference point. Ingenious and brave in no small measure, crucially, Brunel exemplified the type of determination we wish to see in budding designers and engineers. Yet, is there not a problem in the fact that our role model par excellence comes from two centuries ago?
Bringing Brunel into the here-and-now is crucial if he is to he is to be of relevance to the young people of today. In the 19th Century, Brunel's obsession was with pushing the boundaries. His very name, Isambard Kingdom Brunel seems to embody this 19th Century mission to get people travelling further, faster, bigger. Transporting Brunel into a 21st Century context, I wonder what the equivalent challenges might be? Dwindling fuel supplies, water shortages, obesity, coping with an ageing population...the scope for tomorrow's designers is vast. Design and Technology has a vital role to play in bridging the gap between the educational arena and the design engineering challenges in the world around us. Your Brunelian task is no small feat: getting schoolchildren to play the role of tomorrow's designers today.
I wish you a successful conference.
