latest news October 2009
Nottingham BSF schools open The first phases of Nottingham’s first two BSF schools have now opened, and both have already been shortlisted for awards at this years Partnerships for Schools Excellence Awards. We started working with the schools about 4 years ago, supporting (and challenging) them through the process of developing a vision, translating this into a design brief and supporting them through the design (by Capita Architects). The results are really something special. Bigwood School is a new build project, phased to allow the new school to sit appropriately on the site without unduly disrupting the school through the build process. Hadden Park High School is a remodelling/ refurbishment project, and shows just how much a school can be transformed – both physically and culturally through this process |
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Outdoor learning at Yeoman Park This project follows on from the success of our creative spaces project where we worked with staff to redesign and reconfigure the hall as an innovative immersive learning space at the heart of the school. Similar attention has now been given to the external learning and play environment. Focussing on the learning and development needs of the children in this special school, we have designed the space as a ‘blank canvas’ that will hopefully provide a rich and stimulating environment open to imaginative exploration. |
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Conferences and Events
The innovative approach that we and the Nottingham BSF team have been taking to engaging school communities through the BSF process is attracting increasing attention nationally.
On October 19th we presented two workshops at the BSF and Culture seminar organised by the CCE (Creativity Culture and Education) at the Brislington Enterprise College in Bristol.
In November we will be making a presentation at the CSBN/CABE conference at the RIBA, Creating Excellent Primary Schools. At this we will be showcasing the creative engagement process with the Southwark Primary School in Nottingham, and showing how ideas developed through this have driven and been successfully incorporated in the completed design.
Student voice and creative space in Grantham
In the summer term we completed a small Creative Partnerships project at St Hugh’s in Grantham, where the school had identified a desire to improve the learning environment for the English Department.
We worked with a small core group of students and staff to explore a variety of approaches to learning and a variety of different learning settings. From this the existing spaces and furniture were reconfigured for a day to trial (within the existing timetable) a variety of different approaches and settings.
The core group then developed a design brief for that was used as the basis for a design, build and fit out project over the summer.
Click here to see a video of the students talking about the project