Dott 07 and The Design Council
The government's Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme will spend £6.3billion in 2007-08 on providing 21st century facilities for every secondary school pupil in England. The Design Council has advised government that for the new schools to be fit for purpose, good design and good design practice need to be central to the BSF programme.
What the public, and the Design Council, want is to ensure that the £70billion investment in schools over the next 10-15 years secures learning environments that are designed to meet pupil and staff needs now, but also be easily adaptable for the future.
The Design Council has been exploring and working to explain the impact of effective design on learning environments since 2001 and has developed an online toolkit, designmyschool.com, due to be launched in summer 2008, which combines all it has learnt about defining and addressing the issues facing school facilities.
designmyschool.com is intended to provide a way for secondary schools and pupils to identify the key weaknesses in their working environment, and how best to manage a process of change. The Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Design Council are exploring how to promote use of this site, but 1,000 schools have already expressed an interest in using the toolkit to shape their schools' future.
In 2002 our Furniture for the Future initiative funded three teams of designers and manufacturers to work together to develop innovative furniture for learning. The results included the Orbital Workstation, developed by the Azumis and Keen Group.
In 2006, the Design Council gave evidence to the House of Commons Education and Skills Select Committee Inquiry into Sustainable Schools and called for all users to be involved from the start to ensure learning environments are fit for purpose in the long term.
With Dott 07, the Design Council has run three projects which are implementing design solutions for schools in the North East. OurNewSchool asked: 'What are the design priorities when a school is rebuilt?' It worked on a solution that designed schools as a social system first and a building second.
OurNewSchool
Service design consultancy Engine worked with Walker Technology College in Newcastle for the OurNewSchool project, involving the entire school community in the process of redesigning the school before architects were commissioned.
Head Teacher Steve Gater says the college got involved because of the urgent need to 'ask searching questions of the education system' and of the necessity 'to listen to what our clients - the students, parents and community think and feel about the system'.
ECO Design Challenge
Dott 07 has also become part of the school day for some year 8 pupils in the North East. The ECO Design Challenge asked if schools knew the size of their ecological footprint, and if design could help them make it smaller. Awards were given to those schools who designed the best responses to reducing the ecological impact of their schools, with the 20 schools who presented the best ideas already having had the chance to work with professional designers to develop their ideas.
These final ideas can be seen at the Dott 07 Festival which runs from 16-28 October in Newcastle. Students have the opportunity to win money, teachers the funds to travel to sustainable communities and projects and, it is hoped, the North East will soon benefit from more sustainable schools.
Move Me
The Move Me project looked at how to improve how school children get to school. The transport issues at Scremerston First School in Northumberland was the focus of attention because, as a small, rural school, its students sometimes needed help getting to and from school and after-school clubs. But how could this be done without putting more cars on the roads?
Move Me looked at the existing public and private transport provision, and worked with the community to devise ways to make it better suit their needs.
