Poplar Farm pupils take tour of their winning designs at show home

Young designers paid a visit to an estate’s show home to see their winning interior design ideas brought to life.

Pupils at Grantham’s Poplar Farm School had a tour of Vistry’s Kings Newton site after two winners and six runners-up from the school’s Year 5 classes were treated to a special tour.

The tour was led by Edward Thomas Interior Design, the team behind the interiors for Linden Homes - one of Vistry’s brands - giving the pupils a chance to see how their designs have been incorporated into the final interiors.

The visit marked the culmination of a creative initiative launched last year, when Vistry first began working with the school, which is located directly behind the new development.

During an initial visit, the Vistry team, including the site manager and interior design partners, delivered a presentation to the Year 4 pupils, sharing mood boards and explaining the process of building and styling a new home.

Inspired by what they’d seen, the children were then invited to take part in an interior design competition for the Kings Newton show home, submitting their own sketches with the opportunity to have their winning designs displayed as part of a special collage within the show home.

As part of their prize, the finalists received a small gift and were invited back to the development for a guided tour of the completed home.

The design team highlighted how the children’s ideas had influenced the final interiors and explained the process of creating mood boards to shape the overall design.

Alex Stark, managing director at Vistry Group East Anglia, said: “This has been a fantastic way to involve the local community in the design aspect of a development and to illustrate to young minds how art and design is used in everyday life.

“We were really impressed by the creativity and imagination shown by all the pupils and by their understanding of the challenge. Projects like this are a great reminder of how housebuilding can positively contribute to the places in which we operate, whilst creating long-term, thriving communities.”

In addition to the design project, the partnership between Vistry East Anglia and Poplar Farm School has extended into broader community support, with Vistry arranging for the school’s flagpole to be fixed as well as committing to contributing towards land which will help with improvements to the school grounds.

Faye Anderson, a teacher at Poplar Farm School said: “This has been such a fun and rewarding project for our pupils.

“It’s been interactive, creative, and educational and the children absolutely loved seeing the show home, especially the scanning machine that locates pipes and services underground.

“We’re very grateful to Vistry for the collaboration and for the investment in our school community.”