For many years, and all over the world, not just in the UK, Jeff Bishop has committed time to working with children and young people – often free (the core commitment is 10 days per year), though he has occasionally persuaded clients to pay for this. The work has been mainly through schools, bringing together curriculum concerns for Environmental Education, Education for Sustainable Development and Citizenship in exciting and challenging activities.

Much of this has been done as an integral part of engagement work on practical regeneration projects because we believe that it is absolutely essential to hear the voice of tomorrow’s generation. That work is supported by the production of general materials and packs for schools. The following two examples help to explain our approach:

Grove Airfield

As part of the early engagement work on the Grove Airfield development in Oxfordshire, Jeff and colleagues (including from the professional design team) ran a day workshop for local secondary school children during which they designed buildings for the site. Small groups designed – fully in 3 dimensions – housing areas, a new ‘centre’, a community park and the development as a whole. Some exciting ideas emerged, some of which found their way into the later designs. The event report can be downloaded here:

  [Grove School Workshop Report]

Bridgwater Challenge

As part of the engagement on this regeneration project, several activities were developed, with primary schools, secondary schools and the college.

This started with three competitions. Primary school children produced ‘memory maps’ of Bridgwater and then suggested ideas to improve the town. Secondary school students entered a competition to write a ‘Day in the Life of Bridgwater in 2020’, again including ideas for a better tomorrow. Students from the college used the web to hunt out then suggest some exciting designs for key sites in the town. Though fun, challenging and educational, all these activities generated genuine consultation results; in fact some ‘Day in the Life ‘ results were featured up front in the final project report because they led so clearly into the real life regeneration proposals.

We also ran two ‘Design Days’. The first, with College students, was about housing design and that set a clear brief for future housing in the town. The second was for around 60 13/14 year olds challenged to design, again in 3D, buildings for sites that were now looking likely to be up for development. This was an incredibly exciting and rewarding day for all (see quotation from a teacher) and produced some quite remarkable designs. Most importantly, one group’s design was then taken on and ‘drawn up’ by the design team, put in the final report and attracted many comments to the effect that “that’s exactly what we need on that site”! This event report can downloaded here:

   [Bridgwater Young People's Design Day]

Bridgwater Design Day