Project Summary

Beam delivered a number of creative workshops and a temporary installation/intervention to provide teachers with the opportunity to teach outdoors and consider what is needed for the outdoor spaces in their new school.

Throughout the project we aimed to increase knowledge of good design, explore what outdoor learning and outdoor learning spaces means, raise participants aspirations about what their outdoor learning spaces could be and raise awareness about different creative disciplines.

Seeing all the sculptures inspired me
Creative and colourful.
Unique, artistic underground gallery.
Long and short – they all came in difference sizes.
People enjoy the place and the sculptures.
Tamed nature.
Unidentifiable shapes and patterns.
Revealing stars to the sky.
Everyone laughing and having fun.
Pretending to be part of the art.
Artistic.
Resembling things to remember.
Keeping art in our hearts.

Amalgamated students’ poem.

What did we do?

In the first two workshops the students were encouraged to consider the best and worst things about being outside and their favourite memory of learning something new outside, in addition to this they assessed their current outdoor provision.

The Design Council then selected to visit Castleford Bridge and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. The site visit provided a wealth of experiences and exposed them to many different materials, shapes, sounds, art, architecture and designs, and was beneficial to them when they were supporting the design of the temporary outdoor learning space.

The Design Council selected Handspring Design to work with as the creative professional. The role of the creative was to undertake a number of interactive workshops and create a temporary installation.

What did we achieve?

Students wanted the space to make them feel; happy, inspired, active, interested, excited. It should be comfortable and waterproof, flexible, modern and use natural materials. Students took part in a design process realizing their ideas as models. Handspring Design created a structure that directly reflected the student’s designs, turning their hard work into a reality.

Laura Bovis, Head of Design and Technology commented that “If these students were asked to model an outdoor learning space 3 months ago they probably would have made a box, but after taking part in this process they have produced really creative and fully realised ideas.”