Geelong Design Week (GDW) is Victoria’s premier regional design festival, celebrating Geelong’s designation as Australia’s only UNESCO City of Design. Held over eleven days, the citywide event showcases local and international innovation through more than 100 exhibitions, workshops, talks, and interactive installations.
We are once again proud to be a part of GDW, this time showcasing how STEAM learning, community collaboration and student creativity can transform waste into wonder. Through the school’s innovative Design Futures Lab - a space for cross-disciplinary exploration, invention, and hands-on making - students are pioneering practical solutions that reflect Geelong’s vision as a UNESCO City of Design.
This year, the DFL expanded into design activism through a whole-school exploration of circularity and sustainable materials. The exhibition highlights an impressive array of student-led projects, including:
A headline centrepiece of the exhibition is an expansive textile artwork created by more than 350 students across the Design Futures Lab, Visual Communication, Art, Product Design, Outreach and Open Lab sessions. Uniting through sewing, drawing and painting, students transformed thousands of discarded face masks, once associated with an anxious era, into an uplifting, light-filled landscape. Each stitched mask acts as a personal expression within a larger collective metaphor for community, serenity and hope.
Following its debut during Geelong Design Week, the mask artwork will take on a new life when suspended from the warehouse ceiling at Zero Point Yoga Studio in Ocean Grove. As new iterations unfold at Zero Point throughout the year, the materials will complete their circular journey by being repurposed into functional textile goods for Sacred Heart’s Mercy Works program and reusable tote bags.
From waste to wonder.
From anxiety to peace.
From discarded to reimagined.
