I collaborated on the project with designer, Martin Johnson and film maker Pernille Leggat Ramfelt plus 100, 7-10 year olds at Limes Farm Junior school as part of a Creative Partnerships project.

The result of the project was this lovely extra classroom (above)made out of cardboard and brown tape and a space explorers film made by Pernille and the children. The classroom was designed and built with the school children and our main interest was; what happens when the design process is led by the children in discussion around how different spaces make them feel. So in order to create this space we mapped the school an analysed how different places made us feel, we wrote a school manifesto which listed how we would like to feel in our new 'utopian' classroom, we discussed the different kinds of activities we might do in the different rooms. We also did den building workshops in order to learn how to make different materials stand up. We talked about team work, how to have a discussion....

The project was very liberating in that it was possible to discuss with the children in very simple terms utopian ideas about how to improve society and how we as individuals can effect change. Using the school as a kind of model society or village the children were able to articulate what made them feel a certain way and we could look at why that was and extend that question to architectural space. This was particularly interesting because the Limes Farm estate is a kind of island with one road in and out. A typical example of 1950’s utopian architecture gone wrong.

The whole ethos of the school seemed to be about effecting change and the head teacher and staff were inspirational in their vision both for the school and the ways it could effect change in the local area through the creation of a sense of community with the school at the centre.