Elliott Hudson College And White Rose Shopping Create Eco-Friendly Hedgehog Homes

Elliott Hudson College has been very excited to be working with White Rose Shopping Centre on our first live-client project. At the start to the academic year, White Rose reached out to collaborate with the college’s Product Design students to develop a series of eco-friendly hedgehog houses for its outdoor Woodland Walk.

Eight months on, the live project is now complete, and the eco-friendly houses have been installed, creating new safe havens for nature in the area the White Rose.

The centre briefed our students at the start of the year to create environmentally friendly hedgehog houses using sustainable materials, designed to be in keeping with the surrounding environment and made to benefit the hedgehogs as a safe place away from predators when emerging from hibernation or during birthing.

Back in December our students presented prototypes to the White Rose environmental and biodiversity team and used their feedback to create the final hedgehog houses to be placed along the Woodland Walk.

Steven Foster, Centre Director at White Rose, said:

“While our guests know our great stores and restaurants well, many may not be as familiar with the glorious grounds around White Rose.

“We’re exceptionally proud of our work to make the Woodland Walk and surrounding areas a safe, nurturing place for local wildlife, and are delighted with the hedgehog houses that Elliott Hudson students have created for us. We look forward to catching a glimpse of our resident hedgehogs and hoglets enjoying them for years to come.”

Miriam Olutayo, Teacher of Product Design at Elliott Hudson College, said

“The opportunity that EHC Product design students have had has been enormously beneficial to their A-level qualification. Students are required to answer a brief for the non-exam assessed component of their course. In order to do this, they need to work with a ‘real client’ on a ‘real problem’. The White Rose team have worked with students as their ‘clients’ and provided students with the ‘problem’ of ‘threats to biodiversity’.

“For design students, even at degree level, to have the chance to work authentically with big corporate clients like this is a rarity and will be the first ‘live brief’ my students can add to their CVs. The time given by the White Rose team, on site visits, in-college presentations, and award ceremonies along with their thoughtful feedback and regular emails is hugely appreciated by myself and all the students. The students will undoubtedly access higher marks because of the high-quality outcomes they have been motivated to produce.”

Industry collaboration with the Elliott Hudson College

White Rose Shopping Centre are among many companies in the Leeds area to work in collaboration with Elliott Hudson College. Local employers were invited to our first employers networking event, as well as over 50+ university and industry partners attended our ‘Future Focused Day’ careers event in February. Clade Engineering have also become our first work placement partner supporting our new T Level qualifications.

White Rose’s Nurture Nature Schemes

White Rose has introduced a number of schemes to nurture nature and the environment in South Leeds. The centre’s roof is home to 2,900 solar panels – one of the largest systems of its kind in the UK, generating enough electricity to power 200 homes for a year – as well as White Rose’s own honeybee hives, a vital pollinator of local plants.

White Rose also uses recycled rainwater to take advantage of around 40,000 ‘free’ gravity-fed toilet flushes each year and diverts 100% of the centre’s waste from landfill through recycling as well as the centre’s own on-site anaerobic digesters.

The centre’s grounds have been awarded by both Leeds in Bloom and Yorkshire in Bloom as well as the British Association of Land Industries, and all grass cuttings and pruning waste from the site are turned into mulch and reused.