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Contents Good and bad areas in school 2 Favourite places in school 3 Postcards of wild ideas 4-5 A box of emotions 6-7 Design a new Entrance 8-9 Reception 10-11 Canteen 12-13 Outside 14-15 The architect & the artist 16 The artist’s response 17
Introduction This sketchbook endeavours to capture the spirit and content of two full days of activity undertaken by students of Priory Sports College and Willowgarth High School in Barnsley. As part of Barnsley’s ambitious Re-Makin g Learning Programme the two schools will shortly merge and have a new school building. While Re-Making Learning is about more than new school buildings - and intends to transform the borough’s approach to learning - it is our view that the design of those new schools will play an important part in what takes place within them. Stephen Dolman, beam
The Architect
The Artist
The Priory and Willowgarth pupils rose to the challenge of thinking about their school environment in an inspiring way. It is amazing how open minded they were about what a school could and indeed should be. Very concrete and important issues came out of their work, that need to be taken on board by the people responsible for the new schools.
This was a project that incorporated many elements and ideas in a very short space of time and it is amazing what can be achieved in two days in the classroom.
I learned from their ideas that colour and texture are really important to them. Also space they feel both inspired by and able to relax in. Since children spend a large proportion of their time at school they should feel their school is a special place. A big theme for the school children was the poor provision for social space - spaces to relax and enjoy the company of their friends, both inside and outside. They appreciated how important the front entrance and reception areas are and how they can give an image to the whole school. This is space that is often seen as wasted space but they felt it was important - they want to be proud of their schools. They thought school dining rooms could be so much more interesting than they are and outside spaces around schools could be put to much better use. It became clear that dealing with abstract ideas and emotions was easy for them.They were all open to the idea that art is a fundamental way to not only improve the environment around them but to turn into enlivening and practical parts of their school. After looking at some good examples of schools and art in schools and analysing and drawing carefully chosen existing spaces in their school, intriguing ideas for how these spaces could be improved were made into models, using all kinds of interesting materials. These were then drawn leaving us with vibrant design ideas of how parts of their schools could be. I have not seen a school like this yet but I hope to in the future. Prue Chiles, Architect
There were two very important parts of the project for me, firstly the chance to address the challenge of integrating public art and architecture before buildings are designed. It was great to work with an architect during the workshop and focus the project on how you can make public art part of the structure rather than an object floating in space. The second important part was working on a project that aims to give the students a chance to have their voices heard about their opinions of the daunting prospect of a new school. This workshop was based not only how the school could look but also how it should feel, what emotions are created with space, colour and materials. I was amazed at how the pupils managed to grasp often complex and abstract ideas and to question what could be achieved with imagination and daring designs for the new school. I hope that this has empowered the future users of this new school to be demanding, challenging and adventurous in their aspirations of the new school design. This group of pupils are acutely aware that their current surroundings are grey, dull and prison like, so lets hope that the outcome of this workshop feeds back to the architects, developers, governors, council etc to get a radiant, expressive and characterful new school that has the chance to be renowned for its good design and integration of public art and architecture. I think a next stage project would be to look at how radical and not so radical sustainable design ideas could be incorporated into the outcome of this workshop. Concept Design Proposal These are just the very first ideas that I have had the day after the last workshop. I thought that I would get a few things down on paper so that they could go in the sketchbook, but by the time the exhibition is ready there will be much more to see about my response as an artist to the pupil’s ideas and wishes for their new school. I can by no means incorporate all of the ideas but a few of them have given real food for thought and I hope that I will be able to reflect this in a design for a piece of public art in the new school. Don’t forget it is just one of the many ideas that could really happen and be part of the new look and feel of this new school. Imi Maufe, Artist
Thanks
We would also like to ire thank Integreat Yorksh of tre cen al – the region tion excellence in regenera ving ha and renaissance, for s thi d fun the vision to project. Project Staff include Kate Bennett (Manager , – Public Realm Learning) blic Pu – Jill Kelly (Manager Realm Projects) and Victoria Hodgson (Exhibitions Manager).
The following students took part: Willowgarth High School Neesha Crawford Georgia Bailey Jake Bayliss Luke Pointon Natalie Dvelys Ross Waterton Alex Smith James Wragg Tom Norcliffe Ella Sanderson Priory Sports College Geneva Brown Vikki Wadsworth Corale Bagnall Daniel Levitt Billy Methley Jacob Hawkins Jak Randle Oliver Burkill Hannah Park Lucy Ralphs Holly Gelder Stephanie Corke
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Our thanks go first to the students – for their enthusiasm and ideas. ed They were well support rs che by their tea d Becky Wing (Priory) an h); Chris Rooke (Willowgart by, and, of course Imi Maufe, Prue Chiles for and Grenville Charles s. the photograph