Design & Technologies Week 2026
Thanks to our sponsors for their generous support for Design & Technologies Week |
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DATTA Vic are delighted to announce the dates for Design & Technologies Week 2026. From the 18-22 May, we will celebrate this dynamic, challenging and and essential learning area, where school students learn to be the creative problem solvers of the future! How your school participates is up to you - teachers can browse our resource bank below for ideas for activities, lessons, excursions and incursions. In previous years, some did something special with their regular classes or tutor groups, some delivered lunchtime events and some even ran design-themed school assemblies. And there's even more reason to celebrate as our program runs alongside with Melbourne Design Week (MDW). This annual initiative offers a platform for designers, educators, enthusiasts, thinkers, and businesses to come together to share ideas and explore how design can be used as a force for good in an increasingly complex and precarious world. |
Please register your school if you're planning to take part. It will take seconds, but it's a huge help for us to know how schools are celebrating! |
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Events and Activities for Design & Technologies Week 2026 | Melbourne Design Week 2026 |
Keep checking in as we'll be adding events and activities happening throughout Victoria as they come online. These will be perfect for teachers celebrating Design & Technologies Week with their students.
 | Circularity & Regenerative Design free members' PD 4pm - 5pm, Tuesday 19 May, online Members, join us to celebrate Design & Technologies Week 2026 and explore regenerative design and the circular economy with designer Isabella Raco. Circularity and regenerative transformation are the baseline of Isabella’s practice, and her work investigates how, when people engage directly with repair, reuse and redesign as embodied systems thinking, making is a catalyst for behavioural and cultural change. |
| Why Design? Open Studio at Monash University 10am - 12noon, 22nd May, Monash MADA, Free but booking required Join students and staff from MADA and participate in a co-design activity offering insights into design education at Monash and discover design’s vital role in our collective futures. This session offers an opportunity for high school students, their teachers and their parents to understand more about the burgeoning field of design practice and experience the learning environments of Monash University. |
| Designing the Everyday with Daniel Emma Studio by NGV 9.30am - 10.30am, Tuesday 19 May, Online - Levels 3-8, Free How do designers make the everyday extraordinary? Daniel To and Emma Aiston of Daniel Emma Studio present this FREE online workshop live from the NGV. After exploring their inspiration and design process, Daniel and Emma will engage students with some challenging and fun design activities which will use the students’ world as a starting point to unleash creativity, encourage collaboration and build design-centred thinking. |
| Top Designs 2026 9am - 5pm, 14-24 May, Melbourne Museum, Ticketed Explore what it means to be human now and in the future through ideas and design solutions from emerging creatives in Top Designs. With nearly 1,000 applications from across Victoria, eighty-one students were selected across nine design studies by a panel of expert educators. Exploring technology, materiality, sustainability and community practice, these works demonstrate the research and experimentation involved in the development of responsive design. |
| Curator Talk - Radical Aesthetics: Japanese Fashion from the NGV Collection 12 noon - 12.30pm, 29 May, NGV International, Free, Senior Students In this floor talk, NGV curator Charlotte Botica introduces a new display that features fifty-eight works highlighting the remarkable influence and impact of Japanese designers on global fashion practice from the late 1970s to today. Includes Hanae Mori, Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake and more. |
 | The Pattern Project with Kowtow 10am - 5pm, 14-24 May, Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, Free Experience the circular economy as you collect an exclusive pattern for a current-season style to make yourself. This process considers not only how a garment is made – but how it is unmade, shifting from linear production to circular participation, from passive buying to active making and from waste to regeneration. |
| Treading Lightly at the Koorie Heritage Trust 10am - 5pm, 14-17 May, Fed Square, Free First Peoples fashion and textiles are grounded in Country, culture and sustainability. Treading Lightly is a major fashion and textiles exhibition showcasing more than thirty-eight garments, textile works and beautifully crafted accessories by six First Peoples artists and designers based in Victoria. |
| 100 Chairs by Friend's & Associates 11am - 6pm, 14-24 May, Magdalene Laundry, Abbotsford Convent, Free 100 CHAIRS features the work of over 100 Australian creatives, studios, artists, architects and practices exploring the chair as a medium. The exhibition provides a platform for creatives at all career levels to present work collectively. All chairs have been designed and made in Australia. |
| Made to Move: Australian Jewellery 1960 - 2020 10am - 5pm, 14-24 May, NGV Ian Potter Centre, Free Made to Move presents Australian jewellery from1960 to 2020 and celebrates designers whose material knowledge informs the creation of pieces made to wear. Featuring materials such as metal, stone, glass, clay and shell, Made to Move highlights traditions of adornment, exploring jewellery’s role as a medium for both personal and cultural expression. |
| Biomaterials Workshop Various times, 14-16 May, M Pavillion Carlton, Free but booking essential - Senior students Get hands-on with earth, hemp and straw in this workshop on building with bio-based materials. Participants work with earth, hemp and straw — materials with long histories and renewed relevance today. Mix and tamp earth for blockmaking and clay renders, cast hemp-lime composites for insulated wall systems, and assemble straw-based insulation panels finished with natural plasters. |
| Transformative Repair Exhibition 12 noon - 5pm, 14-23 May, Useful Objects, 47 Easey Street, Collingwood, Free Transformative Repair is an exhibition that brings together emerging and established Australian artists, designers and craftspeople to reinterpret broken objects, using innovative approaches to repair and reuse. |
| Victorian Woodworkers Association Artists in Residence 2pm - 6pm, 22 May, 5 Tyrone Street, North Melbourne, Free, Senior Students The Victorian Woodworkers Association opens the studios of its five current Artists in Residence – Freddy Mata Mendoza, Wanda Gillespie, Emily McRae, Caleb Biffanti and Margot Feast. This open studio exhibition offers a glimpse into contemporary woodworking practice, from early sketches and prototypes to finished works. |
| The National Communication Museum Education Programs Hawthorn - All Levels What better way to get your students involved in D&T Week than with a visit to the new National Communication Museum? This is the place where students can encounter the past, present and future technologies that connect us. You can do a self guided visit, a guided tour, or even book your 5/6 class on PrimeSci Electric Pathways – From Circuits to Communication workshops. |
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| Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre Visit Melbourne Museum, Open 7 days, 9am - 5pm All Levels If your classes are visiting Top Designs, or if you want to explore the culture and heritage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, don't miss Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre, which tells the story of survival against the odds and celebrates our vibrant cultures through artefacts, storytelling and artwork. And don't miss the Milarri Garden Train - a must for teaching Food & Fibre Production. |
| Budj Bim Cultural Landscape Lake Condah, Open Monday - Friday - Tours operate on demand All levels A visit to the UNESCO World Heritage-Listed Budj Bim should be a must for all students of Design & Technologies. A tour will let you explore one of the oldest human-engineered landscapes in the world, and discover how the Gunditjmara people have lived on and managed the land sustainably for millennia. |
| National Trust Costume Collection Education Programs Incursion/Como House/Labassa House - times and dates on request Levels 7-12 The National Trust runs a fantastic suite of education programs based on their historic costume collection. Why not book a Fashion Trunk Show incursion for Design & Technologies Week, or take your class to Labassa House to be a Fashion Sleuth and Dress Detective? Your students will discover a variety of garments that demonstrate changing styles, manufacturing methods and societal changes. |
| National Wool Museum School Programs Geelong - Times and dates on request All levels The National Wool Museum has a great range of school programs, designed for preps right through to Year 12. From Woolen Wonder, where students explore the properties of wool and get hands-on crafting with wool, fibre and textiles, to Industrial Innovations, which spotlights the innerworkings of the revolutionary innovation - the Jacquard punch card programming system - through a ‘hands on’ coding activity. |
| Meet RUSTIE, the Regenerative Up-cycling Solar-powered Trailer with Interactive Education Incursion Service Looking for a great incursion for your school to celebrate Design & Technologies Week? You can book a visit from RUSTIE! The brainchild of Rethink Recycle, this unique mobile plastic upcycling machine engages students in sustainability and the circular economy. |
| Museum in a Van - Robotics on the Road The Museums Victoria incursions service brings exciting learning programs to rural areas in their outreach van. Your school could book the Robotics on the Road program for D&T Week, and get a hands-on robotics and coding program for Year 3-8 in your classrooms. |
Resources for Design & Technologies Week |
| Design & Technologies Week is the perfect time to try out VR with your classes! And Forest Learning has the perfect resources to do this! As well as a printable template for a cardboard VR headset, they have a whole library of multimedia resources - from tours of timber mills to interviews with forestry workers and farmers. And don't miss the beautiful 360 degree tour of an Australian forest! All resources are free, but you'll need to create a log in. Click on the image to browse the range of VR resources - and don't forget to dig further into the free D&T resources available on the site! |
| An Activity a Day for Design & Technologies Week This set of resources from DATTA Vic are designed to get your students (Or colleagues!) excited about design! They include An Introduction to Design; The Elements & Principles of Design - Focus on Indigenous Design; Invention Trivia Challenge; The Design of the Boomerang and Design Factor Speed Dating. |
| Thinking Outside the Box - the Sustainable Seating Project Get your students engaged in sustainability and creative thinking with this great free resource from Forest Learning & DATTA Vic. Targeted at Year 7 & 8, your class can experience the design process, cardboard prototyping and even VR! |
| Minecraft City Challenges Our Minecraft-based design challenges get your students involved in tackling some of the biggest issues of our time: food and energy security, sustainability and health & wellbeing. These all link to the current United Nations: Sustainable Development Goals and also introduce the concept of Solarpunk, which can help to facilitate their approaches to designing and building preferred futures for the city of Melbourne. |
| Careers in Design & Engineering DATTA Vic created these short films in partnership with RMIT and Monash to spotlight pathways into further study and careers in the design and engineering sectors. They feature a fantastic range of fantastic young role models who are already pushing the boundaries in their chosen fields. |
| Speculative Design Challenges Want to encourage your students to be the creative problem solvers of the future? Then get them to take one of our Speculative Design Challenges! They include activities on Wearable Technologies; Drone Transportation; Future Communities; Home Healthcare and Lunar Living. Each activity includes a video, slides and a printable design thinking map. |
| Fantastic Fungi - The Sustainable Solution to Plastic Waste Want to celebrate emerging materials and sustainability with your students this Design & Technologies Week? Watch Amanda Morgan, founder and Head of Research and Development at the multi-award-winning Fungi Solutions, share how their work with mycelium diverts resources from landfill to sequester carbon, creates new, sustainable materials to design new products and generates economic opportunities. |
| Makedo Education Makedo is a set of safe tools for building with cardboard. It's designed to help kids use their imagination to create things like forts, costumes, and robots. If you have a set in your classroom, Makedo has a great range of lesson plans & activities on their site. And if the budget is a bit tight, they also have 3D printing files for even more pieces to add to the system. |
| Practical Action Education Resources Want to get your students thinking about the power of design and engineering to make the world a better place? Practical Action helps communities develop sustainable solutions to challenges like access to clean water, energy, and sustainable agriculture, through technology. They have lots of lesson plans and activities on ethical and sustainable design, perfect for a D&T Week activity. |
| Mini Design Challenges Looking for some short, fun activities to run for your students of all ages during D&T week? The Tech Interactive is a USA-based Science Centre, and it has produced a series of mini design challenges for students from Grades 4-12. These include activites based on earthquakes, flight, animal homes and prototyping. |
| What do you want to design? PBS Kids have some great activities to get younger children engaged in design. At this website, students are invited to chose a topic - for example, animals, fashion, sports, health, etc. Then they pick a related challenge which they can complete online as a drawing and submit it to be included on the website. There are some fantastic options - design a vest for someone who doesn't like to be tickled, or a toy to help shy children. |
| STELR Resources STELR (Science and Technology Education Leveraging Relevance) is a national initiative of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering. They have a fantastic range of resources designed to engage a more diverse cohort of students in STEM, from careers webinars to a Future Health module. |
| Inspiring Design Podcasts Inspired Education founder Rashan Senanayake has created this amazing series of podcasts where he interviews some of the key leaders in the Design sector, who share their knowledge in global technologies, design thinking, industry standards and most importantly, how they connect back to education. They include people like Marvel's Ben Donnelly who designs for Hollywood movies to Jacky Yang, inventor of the Pegasus flying car! |
| Positive Role Models in Design & Engineering Want to engage a more diverse cohort of students into Design & Technologies? What better way than to highlight a variety of positive role models working in the fields of design and engineering. Discover some amazing creatives from Victoria and beyond whose work and stories will inspire young people. |
| The Science of Solar This video by Professor Kylie Catchpole was created as part of the STELR Shape your Future project and is a great resource for your Systems Engineering students. Kylie is part of a world-class research team looking at all aspects of how solar energy can become a major part of the world’s energy supply. |
| Accessory Design Inspired by Comme Des Garçons In this NGV activity, students will learn about the conceptual processes of designer Rei Kawakubo, from Japanese fashion label Comme des Garçons. Following a design process, students will design an accessory to accompany one of Kawakubo’s runway looks and create a sculptural prototype using simple materials. |
| Designers & Builders - Inspired by the Memphis Design Group This NGV art and design activity is great for the primary years. It explores geometric forms, shapes and colours in the work of Ettore Sottsass, and asks students to redesign an everyday piece of furniture from their home. |
| The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier This VCE PD&T resource from the NGV is based on The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier - From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk. It includes a Fashion Design Task, focus questions and activities. |
| Fernando Laposse - The Avocado Legacy Want to get your students immersed in ethical design this D&T Week? Fernando Laposse is a Mexican designer whose work was part of the NGV Triennial 2024. He uses his design to highlight the negative impact avocado farming has had on his local community. Fernando's work is a great reflection on cultural influence on design, the ethical considerations of a designer's practice and the technology of materials. The NGV have produced this video on his work. |
| Creative Practice: Globe International by NGV The NGV has produced this fantastic resource for VCE PD&T which investigates the product design process used to develop Globe International’s G3 Bar Skateboard Deck and Dimension Shoe. It includes interviews with Global Head of Product Design, Matthew Wong, who discusses their initial product design through to sustainable product redevelopment. and examines the role of research, materials, technologies, evaluation and sustainability in their user-centred design process. The resource also includes questions for classroom discussion. |
| Creative Practice: Great Wrap by NGV This NGV resource for PD&T encourages students to investigate the product design process used to develop Great Wrap’s Nudie Roll, a home-compostable stretch wrap, and the Great Mate dispenser that accompanies it. In 6 videos, the designers describe the steps involved in creating the potato waste-based material used to produce the wrap and discuss key steps in the design process that informed the development and refinement of this ground-breaking product. They explain the importance of the end user in the design process and highlight the significance of their collaboration with Bayly Group designers. |
| Possum Skin Cloaks with Maree Clarke by NGV This is another fantastic resource from the NGV for Levels 3-6. Students learn about how Maree made her possum-skin cloak and the personal meaning of the design, then create a design representing significant places or journeys from their own lives. It includes a video, worksheet, resources list, tips on using the design process and evaluating their work. |
| We the Makers by The National Wool Museum We the Makers is the National Wool Museum's biennial program dedicated to supporting authentic design, material consciousness and sustainable, ethical practice. Their Sustainable Fashion Prize challenges the next generation of fashion designers to create an outfit that “represents their personal design aesthetic and showcases their commitment to sustainable fashion.” The NWM has created this great series of interviews with the participating designers - Watch them with your students for some D&T Week inspiration! |
| Ethical Clothing Australia Resources Do you want to explore local sustainable fashion with your students during Design & Technologies Week? Check out Ethical Clothing Australia's website for some great information. They prompt you to consider a range of issues, from, Are your school uniforms ethical? to The costs of manufacturing onshore vs offshore? You'll definitely find some great talking points to get your students engaged in this global issue. |
| Workers' Stories by Ethical Clothing Australia Want to explore who is actually making the ethical fashions we are lucky to have in Victoria? Ethical Clothing Australia has interviewed three people involved in the fashion industry - Kin, Anh and George - and find out more about the process of manufacturing sustainable textiles and garments |
| Engineering Solutions: Air Pollution for Primary The UK's James Dyson Foundation has produced this unit of work for Upper Key Stage 2 (Years 5-6 in Victoria) which focuses on how engineering can solve the global problem of air pollution. The digital pack includes lesson plans, work sheets, videos and posters. |
| Engineering Solutions: Air Pollution for Secondary The James Dyson Foundation has also created a unit of work on tackling air pollution for Key Stage 3 & 4 (Years 7-10 in Vic), which as well as the worksheets, videos and posters also includes an activity on using Arduino to build an air quality monitoring device. |
| Engineering Challenge Cards Here's another fantastic free resource from the James Dyson Foundation - you can download a range of engineering challenge cards, including a balloon car race, spaghetti bridges, marble run, cardboard chair, Chinese New Year, Ramadan, Deepvali, Christmas, and much more! |
Do you want to be a Design & Technologies Week partner and have your events/resources listed on this site? Contact Laura @ pl@datta.vic.edu.au |
If you need some more ideas for activities, the Design & Technologies Week website is filled with resources to help you engage your students - including design challenges, engineering activities, virtual tours, STEM projects industry podcasts and much, much more! This site is live all year round, and is a great resource for teachers!
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