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ACADEMY OF URBANISM CONGRESS VI, Glasgow 2011

Provocation Paper 3:

Learning

Prepared by A+DS

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1. The neighbourhood in the global context

At the start of the 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Finland suffered one of the most severe economic recessions of any western democracy since 1945. Yet it rebounded, largely on the back of the success of Nokia and the mobile phone industry to become one of the fastest growing and most innovative societies in Europe. The foundations for Finland’s success were laid in 1964 with the creation of the cross party Science and Technology Council which helped to sustain public funding for R&D. As a result, Finland’s networked economy is not orchestrated by private venture capitalists and entrepreneurs: it revolves around public institutions such as Sitra and Tekes which bring industry and academia together with large companies like Nokia. The country in effect became a learning place, which fosters innovation in all that it does.

“Most innovation involves borrowing ingredients and blending them together in new ways. We need that approach to policymaking as well: borrow and learn lessons from these models of innovation and then blend them together to create something distinctive and appropriate” [10x10x10 paper, Dublin]. If this is the case, and we seek to develop our capacities in innovation, how would our places be different if learning was the key driver for change?, What might be the benefits for the whole community, and say planning priorities be, at neighbourhood scale in terms of:

• Theneighbourhoodasateachingcanvastolearnfrom.• Theneighbourhoodasastageforsettingswherelearninghappens• Theneighbourhoodasaplacethatislearningandimproving

2. Senses of PLace: Learning Towns (Exhibition Pamphlet Extracts)

Approach

The ‘Senses of Place : Learning Towns’ initiative focuses on the two principles at the heart of building better schools and communities in Scotland – participation and collaboration.

Scotland’s commitment to participation recognises that the people who learn in our communities are the true experts about their own lives and know the most about their own surroundings. Tapping their expertise and

ACADEMY OF URBANISM CONGRESS VI, Glasgow 2011 Provocation Paper 4: Learning

“The challenge for the future then as a competent global player, is to foster a culture of learning, enabling educational centres that promote flattened hierarchies; educational programmes that tackle real world problems; and platforms of collaboration that enable open learning and continuous self development. The net result of doing this will be a country that is capable of changing change.”

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insight through meaningful engagement is key to finding out what works best in any given context. Talking to teachers about teaching, children about childhood, and neighbours about their neighbourhoods is more likely to provoke workable solutions that are supported by the people they are designed to help. Participation is the way we do things in Scotland.Collaboration is an inevitable part of providing the best services possible using the overall resources available and all the assets we have on the ground. By looking at a whole place we can support whole lives – putting learning at the heart of economically sustainable communities. By asking the simple question – what can we do with what we’ve got – and dovetailing our priorities, we stand a better chance of better outcomes for any given level of resources. Collaboration is the way we make decisions in Scotland.

‘Senses of Place : Learning Towns’ uses design to imagine different ways of doing things. It also delivers economies of benefits which means we always do more with whatever we have. Inspired pragmatism is not the opposite of ambition: it is the way we deliver our ambitions in Scotland.

Participation

Exploring new ideas often means we need to deal with new people and new institutions – and forge new conversations and new relationships. These kinds of conversations form the bedrock of how we design our schools in Scotland. ‘Senses of Place : Learning Towns’ shows the potential impact of committing to open, well managed, and authentic participation.

Participation seems like a good idea to most people – but general support is almost always tempered by specific reservations. These reservations usually find expression in two frequently asked questions.

Isn’t there a danger of raising unrealistic expectations? Yes there is, if you ask people what specific solutions they want built rather than what needs and hopes they want satisfied. It is not unrealistic to have an expectation that people will be listened to about the aspirations they have for the places they want to live in. We want our communities to have high aspirations and we expect the places we create to help turn them into reality.

Why should experienced professionals listen to inexperienced amateurs? Because they will have to live their lives in what the professionals create. Because they are the world class experts about their own lives. And, because the alternative – don’t try to understand or engage with the people who will use your design – is not a credible, responsible way to make great places.

These days participation is not an option, and done the right way it can be a revelation. Better briefs, better insights, better design, better outcomes.

ACADEMY OF URBANISM CONGRESS VI, Glasgow 2011 Provocation Paper 4: Learning

“Talking to teachers about

teaching, children about childhood, and neighbours about their neighbourhoods is more likely to provoke workable solutions that are supported by the people they are designed to help.”

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Learning Towns

In 2009 the Schools Programme was invited to support Dumfries and Galloway Council in a review of their schools provision within the town of Dumfries. The challenge facing Dumfries was how best to redesign its educational system in the context of the Curriculum for Excellence, the efficient delivery of services across the Burgh, and investment in learning which would help the town’s economic regeneration

A programme of workshops with the Council and its partners explored the potential service and resource benefits of ‘joined up working’ across the whole Burgh, structured around the pressing and practical agendas of the diverse people actually engaged in making Dumfries a better place

The emerging briefs from these collaborative events and conversations pointed towards Dumfries becoming a ‘learning town’ which would seek to address and integrate learning, planning, economic, and community agendas. Learning would become the key prism through which any consideration of the town’s future would be viewed.

This work directly resulted in a long term strategy for the future of Dumfries. To create a town based on a deep understanding of how ‘learning’ could underpin the sustainable growth of the town and the lives of its communities. ‘Schools’ would be a part of the whole rather than oases of learning.

This project also acted as a catalyst to share and test new architectural models for learning in an urban setting and provided a real context for the work that became ‘Senses of Place : Learning Towns’.

Collaboration

Schools matter. They are public places which convey the meaning and purpose of learning in our communities. For children, they are the single most significant built expression of the civic world. Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence encourages, recognises and fosters learning wherever this takes place. It recognises opportunities for learning beyond the school walls - and the potential of whole communities as places for learning. Those who provide education, from Nursery to University, are responsible for a vast estate at the heart of communities and cities. The spaces that surround these public buildings are not only a critical resource in learning - but also in redefining, regenerating, and enriching the public and private activities around them. In addition every town contains a great range of other public resources which could offer great learning experiences if institutional barriers could be overcome.

Learning Towns are about focusing on outcomes for individuals and

ACADEMY OF URBANISM CONGRESS VI, Glasgow 2011 Provocation Paper 4: Learning

“To create a town based on a deep

understanding of how ‘learning’ could underpin the sustainable growth of the town and the lives of its communities.”

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“ It is easy to overstate the role of design and placemaking at the expense of the delivery of services. In the real world these two agendas need to be re-united and recognised as facets of the same issue - how to design our built enviroment to improve our lives”

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communities using all of the resources that are around them. For any given community the challenge is to harness the funds to that place, and the assets in that place, to deliver the priorities for that place.

Creating learning towns requires a new level of collaboration between those who hold assets and those who deliver services. Based on a number of such exercises with local authorities, the evidence is that Scotland is well placed to explore better ways of doing what we want with what we’ve got.

Design

‘Senses of Place: Learning Towns’ is not all about design, but design is key to imagining and realising the kind of places we want in Scotland. In this context, design can be defined as the ‘art of the possible’. It creates new possibilities and offers new choices.

It is easy to overstate the role of design and placemaking at the expense of the delivery of services. But in the real world these two agendas need to be reunited and recognised as facets of the same issue - how to design our built environment to improve our lives. Design is often something we turn to after we’ve solved the big problems. And it is difficult to underestimate the opportunities we miss, and the resources we potentially squander, by not exploiting what design can offer us.

Strategic design can be a unique tool for solving big problems. It is what we should bring to the table at the start to help us reframe questions as well as re-imagine answers. Design is not just a drawing: it is an approach, a tool, a way of looking at the world and making it different.

Design offers us a way of looking anew at our towns. By bringing together participation and collaboration with a healthy injection of imagination and pragmatism, we can begin to see these as the places that children imagine they could be.

3. Planning for outcomes

The learning towns process has generated some learning in and of itself about the way we approach place making. It helps question:

• Whatbuildings,spacesandmaterialqualitiescouldbeastimulantforteaching

• Whatorganisationsandplacescouldbepartnersforexperientiallearning?

• Thepotentiallinkagesbetweenthedifferentlevelsoflearningfrompre-school to higher education.

ACADEMY OF URBANISM CONGRESS VI, Glasgow 2011 Provocation Paper 4: Learning

“Strategic design can be a unique

tool for solving big problems. It is what we should bring to the table at the start to help us reframe questions as well as re-imagine answers.”

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• Whereinformallearningishappening,andthepotentialspacesforlearning

As a process, it raises challenges for practice. It starts with the child at the heart of everything, and unpacks all opportunities in this context. The default is not to building, nor saving money. The default is to use resources wisely to create both a context and canvas for learning. The idea of an innovative set of communities driving change and learning without boundaries is an idea that is taking root in a variety of contexts, from ‘Designing 21st Century’ in Dublin, to D School, part of the Stanford Business School in California, the open learning environments of ‘Le Laboratoire’ in Paris, the social entrepreneur contexts of KrausPilots in Denmark and the Institute without Boundaries in Toronto. To enable the learning and potential of this approach to embed as a real driver for change at a place and community scale, there seem to be four key challenges:

• Conceivingcitiesandlivinglaboratories Matching real world projects with multidisciplinary, real world people.

• Mixingindividualsfromthepublicandprivatesectors Creating multi-disciplinary teams that can work collectively and

leverage the diversity of their thinking and disciplines to their challenges.

• Allowingprocessestoproduceoutcomes Establishing a set of tools and methodologies based on design

thinking that outline a clear and directed but still flexible creative process that produces innovative ideas and outcomes.

• Embracinganethosofpossibilityand‘yeswecan’attitude Without a commitment to participation, collaboration and pragmatism,

informed by the benefits of the approach, change will remain an idea superimposed by others rather than an idea shaped from within.

References

Investing in better places - http://www.smith-institute.org.uk/file/Investing%20in%20Better%20Places.pdfDelivering Better Places - http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/336587/0110158.pdfAOU 10x10x10 Folkestone - http://www.academyofurbanism.org.uk/projects/10x/provocation_folkestone.pdfAOU 10x10x10 Dublin - http://www.academyofurbanism.org.uk/projects/10x/provocation_dublin.pdfAOU 10x10x10 Reading - http://www.academyofurbanism.org.uk/projects/10x/provocation_dublin.pdfAOU 10x10x10 Bristol - http://www.academyofurbanism.org.uk/projects/10x/provocation_bristol.pdfAOU 10x10x10 Stoke on Trent - http://www.academyofurbanism.org.uk/projects/10x/provocation_stoke.pdfA+DS Learning towns - www.learningtowns.orgAnn Markusen Creative Placemaking - http://www.nea.gov/pub/pubDesign.php

ACADEMY OF URBANISM CONGRESS VI, Glasgow 2011 Provocation Paper 4: Learning

“Without a commitment

to participation, collaboration and pragmatism, informed by the benefits of the approach, change will remain an idea superimposed by others rather than an idea shaped from within.”

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