Storytelling chair built for Wycombe school (From Bucks Free Press)

Storytelling chair built for Wycombe school

10:10am Saturday 28th July 2012 in News By Beth Graham

A STUDENT has created a storytelling chair, designed to inspire pupils at a High Wycombe primary school.

Jordan Cottee, in his third-year of studying BA (Hons) Furniture at Bucking, spent six months planning and building the four-foot high chair for the students at Booker Hill Primary & Nursery School.

He then unveiled the chair during an assembly at the school.

Booker Hill pupils met with Jordan to give him their ideas and also visited the furniture workshops at the university, to see the chair in progress.

Jordan said: "The chair has a twisted wooden back, to signify the twists and turns that a story takes, and the pupils also contributed story descriptions that have been laminated on to the chair to help inspire them to think of stories."

Jordan even included a leather seat decorated with the school’s yellow and green colours, meaning it sits well in the school’s recpetion area. Jordan added: "This has been a very enjoyable project to take part in and I hope the children get a lot out of seeing the construction of the chair through to completion and then seeing it situated in their school."

Geraldine O’Brien, headteacher at the school, said: "We are really pleased with the chair and all the time, effort and patience Jordan has put in to making it and involving the pupils in the design process."

"It has turned out exactly as we hoped and should prove an inspiration for schoolchildren for years to come."

Pupils Ronan Cullen-Johnson and Nayaab Akram, both aged nine, were the first to get an imaginative seat. Nayaab said: "This is so amazing and all the children at school like it but I would really like to take it home so I could sit on it myself whenever I wanted."

Other furniture made as part of the project included a bench for the Welsh Assembly Government and a chair for legendary Soho Jazz Club, Ronnie Scott’s.