UPDATE: Education Secretary Michael Gove has announced a major overhaul of the English schools system to the House of Commons in his Importance of Teaching White Paper to MPs on 24 November 2010.

White Design were commissioned to design a new home for Dartington CE Primary School, near Totnes in Devon. The £6M project, was completed in February 2010, provides places for 420 pupils.

The previous school has a wonderful, vibrant environment, where the quality of learning was outstanding. The challenge for us as designers was to understand and transpose this unique quality into a new building, to be located on an adjacent field. Early in the design process, White Design organised a series of consultation events to ensure that the new school fully reflects the aspirations of pupils, teachers and the wider community.

Copenhagen Postscript

This exploratory blogsite set up to compliment this study tour will now be used to try to document, evaluate and record feedback following the completion of our visit.

The trip was also worth it alone for the chance to see two wonderful films at Louisiana in Pipilotti Rist's fantastic Homo Sapiens Sapiens; as well as Johan Grimonprez's disturbing (and pre 9-11) Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y  (see below).

Learning Journal

Learning Journal v7

Images

Click on this Camera-Works link to access David Eaton's kindly supplied images from our visits to: Ordrup School, the Designlab, Copenhagen University and Orestad Gymnasium.


Once the link is open, clicking on any image will start the download of a 'screen resolution' version of the image suitable for using in Powerpoint. No colour or tonal adjustments have been made, so images may look flat on some Windows PC. All meta data, inc credits, are included in the downloaded files. David is happy for us to use them in presentations or internal reports relating to the study trip, but we suggest that if so, that credit to David is listed.

Slideshow of 'Creative Learning Spaces' at Googleplex

 

Click on this Picasa link to view a slideshow of the Googleplex offices...not a school I know, but the same applies to creating creative learning spaces at work as well as school! Googleplex is also an environmentally sustainable campus - see Teachernet video giving a tour by clicking on this Teachernet link

Westborough Cardboard School

Its not just the Danes who are clever you know!......this origami-inspired Cardboard Building is Westborough Primary School in Westcliff. It is Europe's first school (indeed, building) ever made from exclusively recycled cardboard materials. Click on the above image or this link to open a Teachernet video, filmed as part of the Inspiration series.

We Have to Call it School

Black and white film portrait of the off beat Copenhagen unschool called Bagsværd Ny Lilleskole or The Little School. Filmed in 1972–74 by Holt Associates. John Holt the great pedagogue called it his dream school. It was one of the first Little Schools or Free Schools to appear in Denmark, a country with a long tradition of sponsoring alternatives to the public school system.

John Holt developed the notion that children learn best when the are learning what they want to learn. He also realized that this could not be accomplished in a traditional classroom setting. He started the magazine Growing Without Schooling and coined the term unschooling.

Gareth Mills, Head of Curriculum Development at The Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency and Professor Stephen Heppel talk about the future for technology in the Futures Curiculum.