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latest news January 2009

BSF Excellence Awards: 2008

We would like to congratulate the Nottingham City BSF Team on their shortlisting for 2 awards in the Partnerships for Schools 2008 Excellence in BSF Awards in the categories of:

*Most promising transformational learning strategy

*Innovation in student engagement with BSF

We have worked collaboratively with the Nottingham BSF Team right from the start of the BSF process: designing and facilitating the whole school engagement and visioning process with all the schools in the programme.

See our article Setting the Hares Running for discussion about approaches to the BSF process, and click here for links to an interactive CD about the early engagement process with one of the Nottingham schools.

Article on our ‘radical visioning’ process in the Independent newspaper

On the 29th January, an article in the Independent newspaper featured our work with Nottingham City Council BSF team on the visioning process (click here to read the article), and how this has impacted on the design for extensive remodelling of the Hadden Park High School in Nottingham

Primary Capital Programme

Building on the success of our work with the Nottingham City BSF Team, we are now working on the school engagement and visioning process for the City’s Primary Capital Programme.

Following extensive engagement with the school and local community, an exciting and innovative design is emerging for the first ‘exemplar’ new build school in the programme. Visioning and consultation is underway in a further 4 schools

How Places Work

We supported Opun (the east Midlands Regional Architecture Centre) in the design and facilitation of their CABE How Places Work programme. We supported students from schools from Nottingham, Leicester, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in visits to the Nottingham University Jubilee Campus, the Northampton Academy and the Depot in Leicester.

East Bridgford Play Strategy/ Consultation We have been supporting the East Bridgford Parish Council in a strategic consultation process for a new play area involving local children, young people, families and the broader community. From this process has emerged a vision for an exciting and natural play area, far removed from the more traditional KFC (kit, fence, carpet) approach to many childrens’ play areas.

Yeoman Park School We have been working for some time now with the Yeoman Park Special School in Nottinghamshire, on a ‘creative spaces’ project. Starting with a whole school Inset day to audit current spaces and their use, and to reimagine how things might be, we developed some strategic proposals for change. These focussed on a reconfiguration of the central hall space as a ‘blank canvas’ immersive learning environment. Completed over the summer, this project is transforming approaches to teaching and learning in the school. We are about to start on a similar project with the school to explore transformation of external learning spaces.