The Ukulele Project: Layers of learning for Year 10 students

Above: Year 10 students at Woodleigh school, Victoria may participate in a ukulele making workshop that focuses on design, making and materials. Photo: Alex Fregon

The interview below is part of a series that highlights the makers who enter Wood Review's Maker of the Year Awards, presented by Hare & Forbes. 

Ten years and 400 ukuleles later, Dave Colcott's instrument design and making project for Year 10 students at Woodleigh school is a testament to multi-layered learning through doing. Using recycled materials, students are encouraged to design and personalise their instruments. We asked Dave to give us some background to the project and to tell us how the students respond.

Above: Finished ukulele projects by Year 10 students at Woodleigh school. Photo: Dave Colcott

Making a musical instrument is challenging and many would think beyond the capabilities of Year 10 students, but your 10 years of experience says that’s not the case! What do you say to this Dave?

It is a difficult and long project, particularly when you add a design folio to the mix, but a challenge makes it even more valuable. I find that most of the time, if you show them you have a little faith in them, young people are more than capable of rising to a challenge.

The project and processes have evolved over the years to become what it is now. This is the result of a number of incredible colleagues that I have worked with, I feel blessed to be working in an industry that attracts people that are incredibly generous with their knowledge and time.

The project requires a number of jigs so that students can accurately cut fret slots and carve the neck. Many of these have come about because of suggestions from the students.

In-progress work by Year 10 students at Woodleigh school. Photo: Dave Colcott

The ukuleles made by the students are also customised to their own design. How do the students respond to having creative licence?

In most cases, they jump right in. I am constantly amazed by the imagination of some students. Sometimes they need to be told that less is more because they are trying to pack too much design into their design.

I have witnessed students making ukes out of exit signs, oil cans and biscuit tins. One of the best sounding ones was made from an aluminium fry pan (I have no idea why it sounded so good).

Currently, I have a student making a banjolele where the skin on the front is part of a recycled billboard stretched over a cross-stitch ring.

Once I had a student who was completely blind in my class. Whilst he was not concerned in the slightest about how good it looked, but how it felt and sounded. He put tactile indicators on the top of the neck so that he could feel where the third and fifth frets were and sanded it until it was like silk.

All of the designs are in reference to the design brief where the students identify an end user. This is in most cases themselves, however, lately students have used the origin story of the timber they are using to direct their designs.

Dave Colcott with ukulele building students. Photo: Alex Fregon

Using recycled materials can be more time consuming and inefficient production wise. Why is this a focal point? How do the students respond to this theme?

I am lucky to work in a place where education like this is imbedded in the culture. The year 10’s at Woodleigh participate in the Regenerative Futures Program (RFP) where active participation in regenerative education is the norm in all corners of their curriculum.

It is time consuming but has added a lot to the value of the project. By the end of the semester, any one of my students can tell me what type of timber each part of their ukulele is made from, the properties that make it appropriate for its use and where it has come from.

A large part of the RFP is story telling. Imagine a student telling you that the neck of his handmade ukulele saw 300 years as a blackbutt tree in the ovens valley (200 years of it before European colonisation) where Min-Jan-Buttu people used fire to tend the forest to encourage regeneration and feast on bogong moths in its shade. It saw the gold rush first hand and was later cut down to become a part of the Beechworth Gaol where Ned Kelly and the Kelly gang were held. Or that their spruce sound board had travelled to Australia as part of a piano with a polish immigrant family after the second world war. This is true of two of my students and I intend to have them know these stories so they can tell them. I feel lucky that my subject can offer this kind of relationship with materials and history (Don’t even get me started on the numeracy and literacy involved in a project like this).

This semester, we will use waste polyester resin from a local surfboard factory for some of the nuts and saddles and ebony from piano keys as the tuning pegs. A bee hive, redgum stumps, a coastal banksia that fell five metres from the shed that it the instrument was made. Would you believe, one student is making a neck out of a part of the classroom that the uke is being made within?

In-progress work by Year 10 students at Woodleigh school. Photo: Dave Colcott

Why ukuleles? How did you come up with the idea of this program?

Probably born out of my interest in materials and their properties and my lack of interest of building another box or spice rack in product design class.

There is something magical about making something that can play music. It turns out that you can play most songs if you know four chords on the uke. This is a huge draw card.

They learn a lot of complex processes with a project like this such as scarf jointing, domino jointing, cold laminate forming, marking and carving complex curves, Laser cutting. This really helps when they are preparing for year 11 and 12.

Students are encouraged to personalise their ukulele designs. Photo: Dave Colcott

How much time do students spend on their projects? If they have access to the workshop outside of class time, how do you manage this?

Because it’s a folio subject, Students create a pretty comprehensive folio to get them ready for VCE as well. The project fits snugly into a 20 week semester, however, they must work consistently throughout. Towards the end of the semester, I offer lunch time lessons for those that need it because students are so keen to get their ukes finished.

It is often the case that students want to spend every lunch time and recess working on their ukulele.

Details of student work. Photo: Alex Fregon

Are the components processed in part for the students? How much of the work do they undertake?

There is quite a bit of prep work involved outside of class time. I love doing it for them  though. I could have been a machinist.

The students get the materials as square stock machined to rough sizes. The scarf joint is cut for the neck but they do all of the other cuts, Laminate and shape it with rasps and files. I use a cnc laser to mark out the fretboard for accuracy. The braces are carved with a chisel and we use flexible plywood in place of the kerfed lining.

What’s your own background as regards woodworking Dave? Is design technology your primary teaching focus at Woodleigh?

I started work as a carpenter on the Mornington Peninsula, building large expensive houses in 1998. I started teaching in 2007 after working with young people in Africa and Canada.

What do you see as the primary benefits of the ukulele project program for your students? What do they get out of this experience?

The benefits seem to be different for different students. For some, it starts as the only thing that gets them to school. The gold here is that it gets them there and starts the reintegration back into the system where they start to feel better about school.

For others, it’s the connection to materials. These students are able to truly respect the materials they are using. They get to know each little feature and ponder its past life. Respect for this small, sacred piece of timber (to more than just them over each of its past lives), quickly translates to respect for all materials. I see students who don’t even register waste, transform into warriors for the planet who take home a product that they love even more because it started as waste.

This project really is the product of all of those who have participated in it. Student suggestions are taken seriously and often shape the way future classes are taught. Students are expected to help their peers and be respectful of people and place. Many days I wonder if these students have taught me more than I have taught them. I am of the opinion that there is a great opportunity, in practical classes, to teach young people much more than how to make and do, but how to be, see, feel and act.

See Dave Colcott's collaborative entry here

The Maker of the Year Awards, presented by Hare & Forbes, is open for entries. With a prize pool valued at more than $20,000, we're looking for talented, creative and innovative woodworkers from Australia and around the world. Will you make the Top 100 in 2026?

Maker of the Year closes Sunday 30 August 2026 and Winners, Runners Up and Top 100 entries will be announced in Wood Review magazine's December 2026 edition. Winners and Runners-Up will also be announced at www.woodreview.com.au.

Learn more at www.makeroftheyear.com.au