Engaging Places – better learning about buildings and spaces

Architecture shapes young people’s lives. But they’re often unable to analyse or articulate what they think about where they live and learn.

Partnership working

Engaging Places brings teachers and outside experts together to promote learning across all subjects through buildings and places. Graveney pupils joined the EP launch.

© Alys Tomlinson

This is an issue for both teachers and pupils. Design is just as important to understanding the way the world works as economics or science. And in that sense, design literacy deserves to rank alongside the three ‘Rs’.

When Asma Chowdhry, a teacher at Graveney School in Tooting, in the London borough of Wandsworth, wanted to get her 13 to14-year-old pupils involved in learning outside of the classroom, she knew they were unfamiliar with talking about buildings and spaces and lacked the full confidence to explore and experiment with these places on their own.

Luckily, earlier this year, her school had just become one of the first to work with Engaging Places, a partnership led by CABE and English Heritage. It brings teachers together with outside experts to look at how buildings and places can make the curriculum real and relevant to young people. The programme also provides a website hosting a searchable database of venues to visit and learning resources.

Asma was able to call on Catherine Duncumb, an architecture education officer at the V&A Museum in London, to work with Graveney School. ‘Linking teachers with professionals is not always easy,’ Asma says. ‘Without Engaging Places, I doubt that I could have established this kind of partnership for my pupils.’

Catherine helped Asma prepare a design and technology project brief. The pupils were asked to create a design for something to shelter under or something to carry, inspired by local places. They walked around Tooting, recording everyday structures and details that could spark ideas. They then created 3-D models, investigating the creative processes that architects use for buildings like the Gherkin and the Eden Project. A dedicated wiki helped them to share emerging designs.

‘Engaging Places has made a huge difference to me and to my pupils,’ says Asma. ‘To have a partner with a different perspective, someone with an architectural background, has been great and the pupils really enjoyed working with an outside expert rather than a teacher. It was a great opportunity to take learning out of the classroom.’