Innovative Whole School Exemplars - The Toolbox (Gareth Hoskins Architects)

THE TOOLBOX:

Senses of Place a proposal for learning in the city

Gareth Hoskins Architects

Whole School Exemplars A+DS Schools Programme

Senses of Place Contents

1. Introduction

03

2. Context

04

2.1

Educational Brief

2.2

‘The Everyday’

2.3

Approach

3. Toolbox Inventory 3.1

Overview

3.2

Detailed Description

08

4. The Container and Storage 4.1

12

Bag/Box/Case

5. Example Exercises

14

5.1

Developing exercises - relevance to curriculum

5.2

Shadow City

5.3

Touchy City

5.4

Edible City

5.5

Sound City

6. A Way Forward

20

Bibliography

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garethhoskinsarchitects

Senses of Place 1. Introduction

This document represents the outcome from the second phase of a research project commissioned by Architecture + Design Scotland as part of their Whole School Exemplars programme entitled ‘Senses of Place’. Gareth Hoskins Architects were commissioned to develop a theme from their work in the earlier phase and to consider how the implementation of a project which addresses this theme might be replicable and applicable to many schools, and how it might change the learning experience for those students. The broad aim was to demonstrate ways in which well-designed learning environments could support delivery of the new Curriculum for Excellence and changes in teaching methods. ‘Learning environments’ are understood to include not just school buildings and their grounds, but potentially the wider environment also.

For the first phase of the Senses of Place research project (2008), we proposed a collection of interventions in a series of rural settings around the case-study school in Orkney. The intention was to establish unique learning environments in each of these settings (hill, forest, field et cetera), but to do so in a way which gently re-orientated the pupils to this very familiar setting in such a way as to force them to look anew at their environment. This aspect of the project, intended to distort a familiar and ordinary place so as to enable its special but overlooked qualities to be seen afresh and its hitherto concealed secrets to be told, seemed to suggest particularly interesting possibilities.

We have chosen the city itself as the setting for this development of the project, and are asking the question “How can we distort the students’ perception of their city such that the familiar, ordinary and everyday become instructive, enchanting, compelling and inspiring?” In answering this question we hope to establish a learning environment outwith the walls of a school, but more importantly to engender an attitude towards the city which enriches the students’ learning as a whole and which induces in them an invaluable sensitivity to the world around.

Gareth Hoskins Architects 30 April 2009

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Senses of Place

1. Introduction

03

2. Context

04

2.1

Educational Brief

2.2

‘The Everyday’

2.3

An Approach

3. Toolbox Inventory 3.1

Overview

3.2

Detailed Description

08

4. The Container and Storage 4.1

12

Bag/Box/Case

5. Example Exercises

14

5.1

Developing exercises - relevance to curriculum

5.2

Shadow City

5.3

Touchy City

5.4

Edible City

5.5

Sound City

6. A Way Forward

20

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Senses of Place 2. Context

2.1 Educational Brief This Senses of Place research is partly a response to the Keir Bloomer position paper ‘Emerging Educational Brief: Senses of Place 3-18’ which establishes three priorities for the potential redevelopment of the secondary school estate in Dumfries.

Below are outlined the objectives for our response to these priorities:

Priority 1 ‘operate on a human scale’ This proposal is indefinitely scalable - that is it can be pursued by a single pupil or by an entire nation of pupils at once. Furthermore, by means of enriching one’s personal connection to it, the proposals seek to actively humanise the scale of the city, which can at times be a frightening, noisy, busy and alienating place for children.

Priority 2 ‘facilitate improved continuity of educational experience from pre-school through primary and secondary education and into lifelong learning’ Because this project is explicitly located outwith any particular school building or timetable, and is concerned with engendering a general sensitivity to the built environment, the skills which it teaches and the lessons which are learned are not limited to a particular age group or stage.

Priority 3 ‘establish an environment that assists implementation of the principles of Curriculum for Excellence.’

The principles of independent learning, flexibly formed learning groups and crosscurricular and interdisciplinary study are very strongly reflected in the proposals. In particular, the notion that schooling is not an end in itself but part of a process of lifelong learning is deeply embedded in the proposals - we are providing a model to inspire an enriched sensory participation with the world as a whole which will persist as a lifelong spirit of imaginative curiosity.

diagram: The Curriculum for Excellence - The Four Capacities

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Senses of Place 2. Context

2.2 ‘The Everyday’ This project is fundamentally concerned with the capacity for the ordinary experiences of everyday life to be instructive, captivating, and informative if looked at in a particular way. Indeed, it is our belief that the city itself can be a museum, a library, a playground, a laboratory and a classroom if looked at with the appropriate care and imagination.

The writer George Perec’s view was ‘that we none of us give enough attention to what is truly daily in our lives, to the banal habits, settings, and events of which these lives almost entirely consist’. For him, the challenge is: How should we take account of, question, describe what happens every day and recurs every day: the banal, the quotidian, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the infraordinary, the background noise, the habitual ... To question the habitual. But that’s just it, we’re habituated to it. We don’t question it, it doesn’t question us ...

The aim of this project is precisely to enable the everyday objects, places and experiences of the city to be questioned by pupils, and in turn to enable these objects, places and experiences to be used to question the pupils. For the city to be used, in short, as the most exciting, multifarious and stimulating learning environment imaginable.

As the graphic artists Michael Rock and Susan Sellers demonstrated in their late 1990s project ‘The Museum of the Ordinary’, the transformation of the ordinary and everyday encounters of city life into a profoundly poetic learning experience requires for the relationship between the citizen and the city to be gently transformed. Their project delineated a number of blocks of downtown Manhattan and named it a museum. In this way, ‘the permanent collection consists of all the designed objects within the perimeter of the Museum: therefore the collection is in a constant state of acquisition and divestiture’. The collection therefore contained water hydrants, manhole covers, streetlights, window frames, door handles, candy wrappers, clothing, vehicles, edibles, kerbstones and fly posters. Small information labels were attached to certain objects to communicate their history and provenance, cordons were strung in front of certain others, and guards appeared to ‘imbue some defended object with a temporary value’. The public was invited to look anew at these familiar things and enrich their understanding of their environment.

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Senses of Place 2. Context

2.3 An Approach In our proposals, we aim to bring about a distortion of the everyday encounters of city life as a means to both invite pupils to question those encounters and to allow those encounters to ask questions of the pupils. Like the Rock and Sellers project, instead of distorting the places of the city themselves by built intervention (with the obvious expense, logistical difficulties, ownership complications and statutory permissions which that would entail) we would propose to distort the way in which they are looked at, experienced, and therefore thought about by the pupils. If pupils can be equipped in some way to be able to look carefully and differently at their familiar urban surroundings, then these familiar places can become inspiring and instructive.

In the following pages, we propose a toolbox. It shall contain tools which equip the pupils to look at, understand, and use their city in new and provocative ways. We shall demonstrate how the use of some perfectly ordinary tools in some perfectly ordinary urban conditions can result in extraordinary new perspectives on the city, and in doing so both achieve particular learning outcomes associated with particular curricular areas, and more generally (and perhaps more importantly) equip the pupils with a greater critical sensitivity about their environment.

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Senses of Place

1. Introduction

03

2. Context

04

2.1

Educational Brief

2.2

‘The Everyday’

2.3

An Approach

3. Toolbox Inventory 3.1

Overview

3.2

Detailed Description

08

4. The Container and Storage 4.1

12

Bag/Box/Case

5. Example Exercises

14

5.1

Developing exercises - relevance to curriculum

5.2

Shadow City

5.3

Touchy City

5.4

Edible City

5.5

Sound City

6. A Way Forward

20

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Senses of Place 3. Toolbox Inventory

3.1 Overview In no particular order, the following tools are included: scissors jam jar ball of string binoculars digital camera stick of chalk clothes peg dictaphone paper bag ear plugs hand mirror pencil and paper magnifying glass salt and pepper wooly mittens stopwatch

The tools are intended to be relatively cheap, readily replaceable, familiar and easy to use, and robust. It is precisely their everyday character which qualifies them for inclusion.

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Senses of Place 3. Toolbox Inventory

3.2 Detailed Description SCISSORS 150mm(l) x 55mm(w) x 10mm(h)

CAMERA 110mm(l) x 25mm(w) x 65mm(h)

used to cut

used to document happenings and record sights

JAM JAR 75mm(l) x 75mm(w) x 95mm(h)

STICK OF CHALK 85mm(l) x 10mm(w) x 10mm(h)

used to contain things of a wet or animate nature and to capture smells

used to make removable marks and white dust

BALL OF STRING 60mm(l) x 60mm(w) x 60mm(h)

CLOTHES PEG 85mm(l) x 20mm(w) x 15mm(h)

used to delineate, to measure, to tie together

used to hold things together and to arrest the sense of smell

BINOCULARS 140mm(l) x 115mm(w) x 55mm(h)

DICTAPHONE 75mm(l) x 25mm(w) x 125mm(h)

used to view distant objects, animals and people

used to record sounds and conversations

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Senses of Place 3. Toolbox Inventory

PAPER BAG 250mm(l) x 210mm(w) x 5mm(h)

MAGNIFYING GLASS 155mm(l) x 65mm(w) x 10mm(h)

used to contain things of a dry nature and store unperishable edibles

used to distort sights and to get a better view of nearby objects

EAR PLUGS 25mm(l) x 10mm(w) x 20mm(h)

SALT AND PEPPER 90mm(l) x 45mm(w) x 110mm(h)

used to simulate silence or to hear the sound of one’s own pulse

used to distort tastes or hold paper flat in high winds

HAND MIRROR 195mm(l) x 90mm(w) x 15mm(h)

WOOLY MITTENS 195mm(l) x 95mm(w) x 20mm(h)

used to see things from a different perspective

used to keep warm and temporarily disable the sense of touch

PENCIL AND PAPER 210mm(l) x 295mm(w) x 20mm(h)

STOPWATCH 65mm(l) x 75mm(w) x 10mm(h)

used to record words, drawings, or rubbings

used to keep time

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Senses of Place

1. Introduction

03

2. Context

04

2.1

Educational Brief

2.2

‘The Everyday’

2.3

An Approach

3. Toolbox Inventory 3.1

Overview

3.2

Detailed Description

08

4. The Container and Storage 4.1

12

Bag/Box/Case

5. Example Exercises

14

5.1

Developing exercises - relevance to curriculum

5.2

Shadow City

5.3

Touchy City

5.4

Edible City

5.5

Sound City

6. A Way Forward

20

garethhoskinsarchitects

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Senses of Place 4. The Container and Storage

4.1 Bag/Box/Case There is a tremendous range of ways in which people commonly store, organise and transport their possessions. The different methods of storage and transportation have different connotations and therefore condition how one thinks about the contents. For example, a magnifying glass stored in a satin- and felt-lined jewellery box will not be thought of in the same way as an identical one stored in a supermarket plastic bag.

The container for this project’s tools - the ‘toolbox’ - will therefore be an important part of establishing the useability of the collection, the attitude which the pupils will have towards it, and the ‘tone’ of the project.

We require storage and transportation which is: 1. stackable (for storage at school) 2. light and mobile (especially for younger children) 3. protective (to ensure the safety of the tools) 4. robust (to survive repeated use and misuse) 5. distinctive and identifiable (to raise awareness of the project) 6. customizable (according to school / agegroup / project)

Importantly, the means of storage and transportation must communicate the seeming contradiction at the heart of the project - on one hand the everyday character of the tools within, and on the other that they will be put to special and unusual use.

The tools must seem both ordinary and banal, and, when assembled in this strange collection, precious and exciting.

Although the design of the ‘toolbox’ is outwith the scope of this study, it is hoped that a full size prototype which addresses the above brief can be developed as the project moves forward.

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Senses of Place

1. Introduction

03

2. Context

04

2.1

Educational Brief

2.2

‘The Everyday’

2.3

An Approach

3. Toolbox Inventory 3.1

Overview

3.2

Detailed Description

08

4. The Container and Storage 4.1

12

Bag/Box/Case

5. Example Exercises

14

5.1

Developing exercises - relevance to curriculum

5.2

Shadow City

5.3

Touchy City

5.4

Edible City

5.5

Sound City

6. A Way Forward

20

garethhoskinsarchitects

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Senses of Place 5. Example Exercises

5.1 Developing exercises - relevance to curriculum The development of the Curriculum for Excellence has been progressing since 2002.

The most significant recent development was the launch of the ‘Experience and Outcomes’ guidance (April 2009), which describes the expectations for learning and progression in all areas of the curriculum.

The guidance states that ‘this material is for all who contribute to the education of Scotland’s children and young people. The experiences and outcomes apply wherever learning is planned’, and recognises the importance of ‘the quality and nature of the learning experience in developing attributes and capabilities and in achieving active engagement’.

It goes on that, ‘... Important themes such as, enterprise, citizenship, sustainable development, international education and creativity need to be developed in a range of contexts’.

In developing a resource that can be used outwith the school in a variety of urban environments, our proposals directly address the need develop learning in a range of contexts that enrich the learning experience. More importantly, the inherent flexibility of the toolbox and the city’s infinite capacity to offer interest and inspiration, allow for an extraordinary range of exercises to be designed which reveal and encourage a deeper engagement with the sensory stimuli of urban life.

The Experiences and Outcomes guidance is structured under the headings of eight curriculum areas and subjects. The wide range of activities that are possible utilising the toolbox contribute to all the curriculum areas and subjects and also provide opportunities for a range of cross curricular activities to address specific items listed in the experiences and outcomes guidance.

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Senses of Place 5. Example Exercises

5.2 Shadow City

LOCATION: Public square with statues TOOLS: Stick of chalk and camera EXERCISE: trace the shadow of a statue directly onto the ground with the stick of chalk. Repeat every hour for a whole day. Photograph the marks and pattern created.

ELABORATIONS: diagram: tracing a statue’s shadow

calculate height of statue and angle of sun from markings research the figure in the statue and the sculptor make drawings / prints inspired by the pattern you have created

diagram: marks on the ground

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Senses of Place 5. Example Exercises

5.3 Touchy City

LOCATION: Streets TOOLS: pencil and paper, and wooly mittens EXERCISE: Work in pairs. One pupil must touch as many different objects as possible (traffic light buttons, different textures of stone walls, door handles, shop windows, pavement, kerb stone etc). and describe the texture to the other pupil who will be wearing wooly gloves. Together make a rubbing of each object studied.

ELABORATIONS: design and produce clay tiles which relate to the variety of textures experienced learn about material properties - why some materials feel cold, warm, soft, hard research where in the world the materials which make the city came from originally

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Senses of Place 5. Example Exercises

5.4 Edible City

LOCATION: City park TOOLS: Scissors, salt and pepper, and clothes peg EXERCISE: Collect fruit from fruit trees, herbs, and edible flowers from the park to complement your picnic. Use combinations of salt, pepper and the clothes peg on your nose to notice how the food tastes.

ELABORATIONS: learn about ‘food miles’ and research where common foodstuffs come from cook a meal on the basis of what has been learned about seasonings and herbs

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Senses of Place 5. Example Exercises

5.5 Sound City

LOCATION: Anywhere and everywhere TOOLS: Dictaphone, earplugs, EXERCISE: put in earplugs. Go for a walk in the city with your dictaphone turned on and notice how different everything seems without the sound. Later, as a group try to identify which recordings were made in which places.

ELABORATIONS: write and record a piece of music inspired by the sounds of the city research the science of sound, hearing and deafness, and learn about sign language seek out recordings of other cities, wildlife, and music from around the world

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Senses of Place

1. Introduction

03

2. Context

04

2.1

Educational Brief

2.2

‘The Everyday’

2.3

An Approach

3. Toolbox Inventory 3.1

Overview

3.2

Detailed Description

08

4. The Container and Storage 4.1

12

Bag/Box/Case

5. Example Exercises

14

5.1

Developing exercises - relevance to curriculum

5.2

Shadow City

5.3

Touchy City

5.4

Edible City

5.5

Sound City

6. A Way Forward

20

garethhoskinsarchitects

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Senses of Place 6. A Way Forward

6.1 What next?

We view this document not as an end in itself, but as the first step in developing an inspiring, flexible and replicable learning experience - a final tool inventory, a design for storage, and a formalised methodology for developing exercises for use with the toolbox. To embark upon this process, and to test the proposals contained in this document for their impact in practice on the learning experience, we need to do two important things.

1. Develop a prototype This stage involves developing a range of further exercises, refining the tool inventory on the basis of these, formalising the exercises in a document or as worksheets, and developing a physical prototype of the container / storage solution for the proposed tools. This will provide us with a prototype of the Toolbox project.

2. Workshops / Testing Having produced a prototype, we would like to test it in a workshop environment. We would carry out a range of the proposed exercises developed as part of the Toolbox with pupils from a range of ages and in a range of urban conditions. The feedback - from both pupils and teachers - would form the basis for further refinement of the proposals. The outcome would be a final proposal for the Toolbox project which could be produced, replicated and used by teachers without specialist input.

Ultimately, it is only by securing the resources required to pursue the project as outlined above that its significant value to the learning experience can be definitively demonstrated.

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Senses of Place Bibliography

Keir Bloomer, Emerging Educational Brief Senses of Place 3-18 (unpublished) George Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces (Penguin, London, 1999) Michael Rock and Susan Sellers, The Museum of the Ordinary, published in the journal Eye, no. 28 vol. 7 Summer 1998 pp 32-35

Curriculum for Excellence website: http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/curriculumforexcellence/

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