Suppose

The heart of Suppose was to engage the school community in the design of their new school and develop the skills of young people as they consider what makes a great building or place, whilst linking into the curriculum. Through a mixture of site visits and workshops, the project raised the pupil’s expectations of good design and its inclusion in the building of new schools; Integreat Yorkshire invested into Suppose to encourage this participation process.

Willowgarth High School and Priory Sports College in Barnsley will be merging, as part of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) national programme, into a brand new school on a different site.

Beam created ‘Suppose’ to inspire and raise the aspirations of 100 young people to apply the skills and knowledge learnt through this process to develop their wants and needs into their new school. 50 pupils were taken to the Leeds Media Centre and the other 50 to the Don Valley Stadium in Leeds on ‘How Places Work’ visits.

The pupils then went on two days of workshops including sketching, writing, model making and presenting, working with artist and Landscape Architect, Imi Maufe and Architect, Prue Chiles.

At the end of the second workshop the Head of Governors for each school attended a session where pupils presented their group models and explained their ideas for the new school.

All the pupils felt that they had an opportunity to express their own thoughts and ideas about the new school and that they learnt about the design of new buildings from the planning and design stages to the use of alternative shapes and colours.

“It became clear that dealing with abstract ideas and emotions was easy for them,” Prue Chiles.

At the start of the project, teachers from both schools were quite apprehensive about the merge of the schools. By the end of the project, the teachers seemed more relaxed and worked well together to complete the workshop.

A greater number of workshops or the opportunity to work with more pupils would create a more sustained impact. An artist in residence following this consultative process could be brought in to create a temporary installation that links the two schools to encourage the communication that has been established throughout this project.

Further information visit the beam website.