Furniture Student’s Competition Winning Bench Installed in Formonthills Woodland

Sara Klodzinska is pictured with her bench in Formonthills Woodlands, Glenrothes. 

Fife College Furniture student Sara Klodzinska’s competition winning bench design has become a reality after it was installed in Formonthills Woodland, Glenrothes recently.   

Sara’s design was chosen from twelve others produced by her HNC/HND Furniture class for a competition run in partnership with The Woodland Trust earlier this year.

The students were given the opportunity to showcase their creativity by designing and building model benches before presenting them to a judging panel which included staff from the College and the Woodland Trust Scotland.  After much deliberation, 18-year-old Sara’s ‘inspiring’ design was chosen as the winner. 

Sara has gone on to turn her design into reality with support from other students from the College.  Fabrication Welding students helped weld the metal frame together while four Decorating students helped paint the frame and make it waterproof. 

Sara, from Edinburgh, is delighted to now see the bench in place in the woodland.  She said:

"This project was a challenge for me and was an excellent opportunity to experiment with different materials and techniques. When I started I had no idea what I was doing, I made mistakes, I learned from them, I just tried my best to bring this weird surreal idea I had to life.

“When I saw the bench set into place at the park it was hard to believe that after all this hard work I put into this actually worked. I enjoyed doing the HNC Furniture course at Fife College and I'm excited to continue the course at HND level this year."

John Wincott, Environmental Services Coordinator at Fife College, said: 

“This is the second year we have worked with the Woodland Trust Scotland on this type of project, and again that students have exceeded all expectations. In addition to this bench project, students from the furniture class have also helped to plant 400 trees on two of our campuses, the trees also being supplied by the Woodland Trust.

“It is ideal for the students to be aware of the whole life cycle from planting trees right through to building a bench for installing in the local woods. The quality of work from the students is absolutely tremendous, and it is all credit to their hard work, and the guidance from their lecturers, that they are able to tackle such challenging projects at such an early stage in their courses.”

Woodland Trust Scotland is part of the largest woodland conservation charity in the UK.  Formonthills is one of 60 sites it manages across Scotland, for people and wildlife. 

Interested in studying Furniture Production or Interior Design at Fife College?  Places still available starting this September visit our course pages or call 0344 2488 0115 for more information.