Education Buildings Scotland

Scottish built environment and policy professionals from the education sector will gather at the EICC in Edinburgh for the Education Buildings Scotland event on 21-22 November

The conference programme for Education Buildings Scotland is shaping up and is set to feature presentations looking at examples of great collaboration between stakeholders who are working together to create a well-designed built environment to provide the very best opportunity for all children, young people and the wider communities.

In a joint workshop session, Architecture & Design Scotland and the Scottish Futures Trust will be drawing on examples of place based collaborative working already happening in Scotland with the learning estate at the heart, and identifying opportunities to share learning, and extend collaboration further.

Scott Brownrigg will be hosting a workshop where they will explore how learning in the near future can influence the building typologies that we call schools and colleges. Delegates are invited to explore bold new visions and break away from the norm to discuss what form the learning environments of the future will take, where, when and how education will take place, and what environments and resources are needed to support it.

The theme of collaboration will be continued in the An Intelligent Client session, where we will be welcoming back Maxine Booth. As quality improvement manager for learning estates at Aberdeenshire Council, Maxine will be presenting the journey of developing an agreed brief, which is wholly designed around educational reasoning and requirements, whilst also challenging learning spaces and meeting the space standard.

As a member of the advisory group on Core Facts, she will also demonstrate that part of developing the requirements is ensuring there is a clear understanding of suitability, and how the Core Facts document will be an essential tool in ensuring the learning estate is fit for purpose.

College and University students and school pupils will feature all through the programme in this, the Year of the Young People, ensuring that their voices are heard in various presentations, workshops and through active participation throughout the event.

In a new Hack Space feature with Architecture & Design Scotland, students will also be looking at the learning environments of the future in a live demonstration: they will brainstorm ideas, design and arrange spaces and run a live learning experience.

Also supported by Gerald Richards, CEO of the Super Power Agency, he will engage the students using storytelling and imagination techniques.

Representatives from the Scottish Youth Parliament will be attending over the two days and will be providing essential insight into the experience of a young person. Chairing the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education’s opening keynote session, they will be there to give us their points of view and get involved in the discussion and facilitate your questions to Swinney.

We are also delighted to welcome back Bernard Chisholm, director of education & children’s services at Comhairle nan Eilean Siar. He will be chairing the Technology Transforming Learning session on day two, during which we will hear from the staff and pupils of Newbattle’s Digital Centre of Excellence and the University of Edinburgh. He will also be chairing the Technology workshop on day one.

As the debate around health and wellbeing continues to hit the headlines and universities work to increase their awareness of mental health and improve their frameworks for dealing with it to provide students and staff with access to the support and infrastructure they need, we will hear from HLM Architects who will be discussing how it can be addressed through the built environment.

Drawing on their work with various universities including St Andrews and Glasgow University, Lucy Plumridge and David Greig will be exploring how new learning spaces can respond to the five ways of wellbeing – connectivity, activity, mindfulness, learning and engagement with a wider community.

In the Repurposing of Existing Buildings session, Dr Gordon Heggie, senior lecturer in social sciences and academic lead for the Lanarkshire Campus Project at the University of West Scotland will be giving a presentation on their new campus, charting their journey and the positive impact it has had on how they deliver the curriculum and the benefit to the student experience.

New for 2018 are the Industry Solutions sessions. Hosted by our exhibitors they will feature presentations from companies who can provide practical solutions to everyday needs.

Myopia, or short-sightedness, is a very common eye condition affecting around 30 per cent of people in Britain. Dr Richard Hobday, an independent researcher and author who has published widely on the impacts of sunlight, will discuss the growing body of research that supports better daylight in schools to address Myopia.

Inspired by the need for improved daylight engineering, Wai Cheung, specification development manager from VELUX Modular Skylights will present options and assistance available to designers – to maximise effective daylight for schools. Using case studies, Portakabin will showcase the potential of modular construction to not only design buildings for clients that are technically complex, perform sustainably and are durable but show how they can also be exciting, innovative and inspiring. L

www.educationbuildings.scot