Learning through the built environment

Learning through the built environment

March 2004

http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/publications_reports_articles/web_articles/Web_Article572

Teresa Dillon, Futurelab

'Learning through the Built Environment, A Regional Perspective', hosted by The Architecture Centre in Bristol in partnership with CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment), was a one-day seminar focusing on child and young-people centred approaches to the built environment, empowering and challenging them to reflect and change their local communities.

Despite the regional focus, for those already working in the area or new to it, this insightful seminar provided a comprehensive snapshot of the kinds of projects and approaches developing across formal and community-based educational practices from national to grassroots level.

From a Bristolian perspective, Mark Rooney's Spacemakers project offered a thought-provoking approach to inclusive urban planning and design practices. Since the conception of Spacemakers in September 2002, Mark and his team have collaborated intensively with young people from the Hartcliffe and Withywood area of Bristol in developing a community site within their locality.

From the beginning, the young people have been pivotal to this project. Through a series of practical workshops - from public speaking, to designing and mapping public spaces, to critical analysis of major UK and European public city projects - the young people have taken the project from its infancy to final build with support from a multi-disciplinary team.

Contrasting this practical, hands-on approach, Catherine Williams and Anna Hart presented their work on engaging primary school children in reflecting on their local environment. Catherine and Anna were specifically commissioned to design a practical teaching guide for Key Stage 2, on how to make the most of the built environment for education.

This work was also piloted in Hartcliffe, with the possibility of it becoming a regional teaching resource. In particular the project focused on detailed cross-curricular lesson plans, from devising myths and stories, to analytical, scale models and survey work. Considering the limited time and pressures teachers are under the outcomes of this project provided well thought-out, practical, detailed case study material that aims to encourage and support teachers to incorporate the built environment into their practices.

However, despite the encouraging display of processes and outcomes, due to the array of works presented at the seminar, there was unfortunately little time to discuss some of the key questions of the day, which were:

How best can architecture and the built environment be integrated within the National Curriculum?
What really captures a student's imagination when engaging with these topics?
What are the benefits to young people, their educators and their communities that flow from placing a greater emphasis in this area?
What support and tools do educators need in order to deliver more themselves - are there gaps in the provision of what's on offer?
Due to the lack of discussion time, these key questions were flagged but unsatisfyingly left to the side in order to demonstrate the richness of other initiatives currently happening within the south-west of England.

Consequently, although all projects presented were positive indicators of how practitioners from education and the arts to architecture and quantity surveying can jointly combine their skills and knowledge to provide children and young people with a stronger voice within urban design, planning and policymaking, some of the issues at the heart of this matter, such as what kinds of learning and experiences are supported through using the built environment within education and what tools are necessary to scaffold this, were only half discussed.

Taking into consideration that such questions have a long history within the UK (for example, refer to Colin Wards, The Child in the City, 1977) and the wealth of experience that was apparent from the presentations and audience members, it was a shame that there was not more time to consider these and other issues.

On a more positive note, overall the seminar demonstrated that within pockets across England, there exist working models and approaches that are positively engaging young people not only in thinking about their built environment, but also actively supporting them in changing it. This was extremely encouraging.

Currently, within the UK, there is a distinct lack of child and young-people centred approaches to this subject. One hopes that the projects discussed are not just one-off occurrences undertaken in the wake of the current government's initiatives on future towns and cities. In the White Paper Our Towns and Cities: the Future, Delivering an Urban Renaissance (NIACE, 2000), the government outlines its plan to encourage local councils to create their own vision and 'renaissance' for their built environments.

If the government would like to achieve this 'renaissance', projects such as Spacemakers require further funding and research into the kinds of learning, skills and experiences it supports. Currently this appears to be somewhat lacking.

Importantly the outcomes of educational and training projects on the built environment are not easily quantifiable; they have a greater legacy than simply the time devoted to them. They enrich and empower not only the lives of those who have been directly involved but also whole communities. This further highlights how, if we are to consider the towns and cities of the future, we need a complex range of policy approaches that take into account the rich and diverse patterns of our built environments and the voices, young and old alike, that contribute to them.

In sum, is it possible that the time is right for more structured and sustained initiatives that constructively consider children and young people's perspectives and experiences of their built environment to be taken into account, not only on a educational level but also on a political one?

The city and the built environment, how it is designed and planned, what it affords - positive and negative experiences - is as important as ever. The seminar demonstrated some of the work that currently addresses how the built environment can be a source of education and learning. In particular the importance of inclusive, sustainable planning and design was a central theme to issues and projects discussed.

References

Our Towns and Cities: the Future, Delivering an Urban Renaissance (NIACE 2000)

Kelly, A and Kelly, M (2003). Building Legible Cities 2. Bristol Cultural Development Partnership

Ward, C (1977). The Child in the City. The Architectural Press Ltd