Engaging Places is an exciting new project from DCMS and the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) to help schools unlock the educational potential of local buildings, places and spaces in the built environment. Built environment education can provide schools with a wide range of curriculum resources; and can also help the school community to engage and participate with local heritage and changes to the places where they live.

To make schools more aware of what can be achieved by engaging with buildings and places, Engaging Places will bring together a wide range of built environment learning providers so that schools can find out why buildings and places matter and what services and resources are locally available.

Engaging Places builds on the booklet  Laying the Foundations: Using the built environment to teach (published in June 2006) and constitutes a key component of DCMS’s pledge of support to DCSF’s Learning Outside the Classroom manifesto launched in November 2006.

The first phase of Engaging Places is a pilot project which runs from September 2006 to September 2007. Led by DCMS the pilot will work with a range of partners including the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, English Heritage and the Academy of Sustainable Communities to :

• Develop a website which can signpost teachers and other educators in the pilot areas (Yorkshire, London and the South East) to local built environment learning opportunities and resources across Key Stages 1-5
  
  
• Create a network of built environment educators which can harness these resources and bring together a wide range of heritage and built environment organisations to share knowledge and best practice
  
  
• Build a research and evidence base on regional built environment education provision and teachers awareness of the subject
  
  
• Report to Ministers in Autumn 2007 with an action plan and cross-departmental policy framework to take built environment education forward with the support of the built environment sector.

DCMS and DCSF hope that the pilot of Engaging Places will lay the groundwork for a dynamic and sustainable network which can enable the whole school community to learn from the past, interact with the present and help shape the future of the built environment.

Newsletter
A regular newsletter with updates on the progress of Engaging Places is available. If you would like to be added to the mailing list to receive the newsletter please send your email address to:  Engaging.Places@Culture.gsi.gov.uk

Laying the Foundations
Laying the Foundations: Using the Built Environment to teach, is a joint publication from DCMS and DCSF highlighting the scope and creativity that is brought to learning when teachers and pupils engage with the fabric of their communities.

Electronic copies can be downloaded in alternative formats here:
Laying The Foundations: Using the Built Environment to teach  [44 pages]

Hard copies are still available on request by contacting: Engaging.Places@Culture.gsi.gov.uk.