Teenagers create 3D sculpture

Based on the idea of Dutch artist Michiel van der Kley, students from secondary schools in Bocholt created 3D prints and collectively assembled them into a sculpture. These have now been presented.

70 young people and their teachers met in the garden of the continuing education center of the JUNGEN UNI in Bocholt (JUBoh). They were welcomed by Isabel Testroet and Jennifer Engels, directors of JUBoh, who together with the bionics department of the Westphalian University of Applied Sciences (WHS) in Bocholt have taken on the implementation of this cross-border project in Germany.

The artwork was created from different white pre-constructed individual pieces, which they printed in several courses within the last months at the WHS in Bocholt. Each piece was selected, personalized and printed by the students themselves. Thomas Waschki, First City Councilor and Head of the School Department of the City of Bocholt, pointed out the importance of 3D printing as a future technology.

To realize the project, six new 3D printers were financed by the Otto Spaleck Foundation. Now that the project has been successfully completed, the participating schools can each look forward to receiving one of these printers for further use. "We hope to have aroused the students' interest in this increasingly important topic, because 3D printing is becoming more and more significant, especially from the point of view of sustainability," explains Jennifer Engels.

The "Sculpture" project, a similar one of which was also created a few days earlier in Ulft in the Netherlands, was funded by the Leonardo da Vinci Innovation project and organized as part of the Germany-Netherlands Interreg program.

The construction of the sculpture marks the end of the four-year Leonardo da Vinci Innovation project, which was specifically designed to draw attention to the world of technology across borders and to raise awareness of the EUREGIO as a promising and innovative region.