Designed for Life

This is the official podcast of the Design and Technology Association. 'Designed for life' aims to entertain, inform and inspire, bringing the worlds of business and industry together. Design and Technology is a wide-ranging curriculum subject that, along with qualifications in other facilitating subjects, can open doors to students across an ever-increasing breadth of career. England was the first country in the world to introduce this subject to its mainstream curriculum offer in 1988. Where we led others, have followed and in various guises, it is now taught in countries around the world including India, Australia, China, USA, France and Finland. This podcast consists of a series of short, informal conversations with people from across the worlds of education, industry and design. The intention is to help to link business, industry and education, as the solutions to tomorrows problems are being educated today!

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Designed for Life

Designed for Life - In conversation with STEM Racing's Andrew Denford

June 23, 2025 • Tony Ryan CEO Design & Technology Association • Season 4 • Episode 6

Many people familiar with this podcast will recognise the name 'F1 in Schools', a design, teamwork and engineering challenge that has existed in schools for over two decades. Some of you will have competed in either regional or, if you are fortunate enough, national finals. Others...I want to say the elite few, as getting there is some achievement, will have made it to the world finals, held to coincide with an F1 race somewhere in the world and closely aligned to the FIA.

I would suggest very few of you know just how this design and engineering challenge came about, how it has grown and constantly exceeded expectations and just who is the founder, Andrew Denford and what drives him to keep pushing this challenge to greater heights.

Finally, why has such a seemingly brilliantly branded initiative recently changed its name and branding from 'F1 in Schools' to 'STEM Racing'?

This episode will bring the answer to all these queries, and more as we bring Andrew Denford, Chief Executive Officer of Denford Ltd., and Founder of Stem Racing back to school and then follow his journey into engineering, taking over the family business at a relatively early age, and how he got the idea that racing a small but carefully precision engineered CO2 powered car down a twenty metre track at speed may be something that schools and colleges might buy into.

It's a great story, filled with a few twists and tales that I know you'll enjoy. So sit back and enjoy, Designed for Life - In conversation with Denford CEO and Founder of STEM Racing, Andrew Denford.

https://www.stemracing.com/

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