The Future Schools Project Award competition was open to all City of Edinburgh Council schools and nurseries. We asked learners to think about the places they learn and how they can make changes to that place to improve inclusivity, wellbeing, teaching and learning. With an aim of learners’ voices influencing our future school designs.
The aims
- Develop learners’ awareness of their environment and their own learning preferences.
- Raise awareness of the impact a learning environment and the way it is used can have on different learners.
- Give learners’ a say on what a good learning environment looks and feels like so we can use this to inspire future classroom designs.
- Promote collaborative learning.
- Share ideas for learning environment design across all our establishments.
The prize
This exciting competition gave the opportunity for a school or nursery in Edinburgh to have a space in their school/nursery redeveloped in line with their learner’s ideas and design. Through the work we requested over the two stages of the competition, the schools/nurseries had to prove to us why they thought the changes would make the improvements we asked for.
Overview of the competition
The competition was launched in early 2019, it was done in two stages, stage one ended before the summer holiday and stage 2 launched after the holiday with the finalists from stage 1.
Stage 1: Tell us a story
We asked our schools and nurseries to produce a story following a set brief and submit it to us by the deadline.
We received 14 entries and a panel of City of Edinburgh Council officers and designers reviewed them using the judging criteria. The competition was high and the panel enjoyed seeing the wonderful work the learners had done. They selected the five entries that best presented what we were looking for to continue to Stage 2.
Find out who the five successful entries were on our blog post.
Stage 2: Design your learning space
The five finalists from Stage 1 were invited to develop their story into a design for a learning space. We launched the second stage of the competition with a workshop on 26th August 2019 where the learners began to develop their story into a design alongside some professionals who had kindly volunteered to help us.
Check out our blog post about the workshop
The winning design and next steps…
The winner of stage 2 was announced at the Education Buildings Scotland Conference in November 2019.
Check out our blog post about the event and the winner.
We are now working with the winning school and HUB South East over the next year to develop their design with the Primary 5 class who have been leading on the project so far. They will be part of the project, making decisions throughout as the client and will be using the project to learn about all of the different parts that make up a redevelopment project for a school refurbishment.
we are very excited to be doing this work with the learners and will continue to update as the project progresses.
futureschoolsedinburgh.com 