Learning spaces

The Learning Spaces project explores the relationship between the design of school buildings and how leaning takes place. In five schools within Greater Manchester, groups of the young people are working in partnership with a teacher and a creative practitioner. New thinking is being stimulated by creative activity.

Four of the participating schools will be rebuilt within the next five years; it is intended that the project should influence their designs. At the fifth, the focus is on shaping learning spaces within an existing building. The project is an advocate for the ‘student voice' in the design of school buildings and is developing a model for creative consultation that could be used on a much larger scale.

The themes emerging in the early stages include the importance of personal space and the balance between feeling safe and feeling imprisoned. A range of views is being expressed; some young people feel that an imaginative school building would be motivating, others see the culture of a school as independent of the building in which it is housed.

The project is being run in partnership with AiS [Artists in Schools; Bolton, Bury and Rochdale] and is funded by the Gulkenkian Foundation.

For further information please contact CapeUK.