Andrea Wheeler (2008) Feeling at Home? Participatory research with children in the design of sustainable school buildings. 3rd - 5th November 2008

1. The Question of Feeling at Home?
Designing for Lifestyle Change with Young
People.
Andrea Wheeler, B.A. (Hons.), Dip.Arch., M.Phil, Ph.D.,
ESRC Early Careers Interdisciplinary Research Fellow, The University of
Nottingham, Institute of Architecture/and School of Education.
(ESRC Project (RES-152-27-0001): How Can We Design Schools As Better Learning Spaces and To
Encourage Sustainable Behaviour? Co-Design Methodologies and Sustainable Communities.)

2. What do I mean by ‘feeling at home’, or
‘feeling more at home’ in school? Why is
the question significant for architects
designing sustainable schools?

3. It is important because it is one that can be asked to children, that they can
discuss, and for adults it raises the question of how we do or can we relate
to childrens’ world-views.
Furthermore, discussions with young people around this theme can raise
the need to:
[a] create better relationships within the school, to the community of the
school and local environment and suggest the requirement for more social
spaces;
[b] create/respond to a wider environmental question for a better, non-
exploitative relationship to the world and others.
For architects it may present an important opportunity to explore how co-
created architectures (in the broadest sense) could begin to address some
of the intentions raised by policy makers and the creators of the UK Building
Schools for the Future programme to transform learning and embed
sustainability into children’s experience.

4. Schools as transitional spaces …
but from what to what?
Schools as second homes?
Schools as shop windows (creating a connection to the community)
Schools as ‘malls’, ‘streets’ and ‘market places’
Schools as ‘call centres’ or mills or factories
Schools as farms and gardens
Schools as villages

5. Designing New Schools and the
Building Schools for the Future
programme
2004
Tony Blair, at the start of the programme, proposed: ‘Sustainable development will not just be a subject in
the classroom: it will be in its bricks and mortar and the way the school uses and even generates its own
power. Our students won’t just be told about sustainable development, they will see and work within it: a
living, learning place in which to explore what a sustainable lifestyle means’.[1]
1] Blair, 2004 PM Speech on Climate Change 14th September 2004, Archive No. 10 Downing Street,
London, http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page6333.asp (accessed 06 May 2008)
2007
The more recent Children’s Plan: Building Brighter Futures, published in December 2007 by the Department
for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), even states an ambition for all new school buildings to be zero
carbon by 2016.

6. The problem of pro-environmental
lifestyle change, encouraging
sustainable behaviour, and of
sustainable citizenship is not simply
about individual choice.

7. We need radical lifestyle changes
and neither educators nor
architects are providing ‘models’ or
pedagogies that can support
sustainable behaviours.

8. So what do children think? What do they
think sustainable lifestyles are? What do
they understand from teachers, from
culture and from the media? What do they
think their schools will be like? And how
do they see their relationship with the
world and others in the future?

9. The workshops
I carried out workshops with young people aged 10-14/15 years old (Years 6-10) and some sixth-
formers. I asked them about their experiences of school. I asked them a broad set of questions, about
school buildings, the school day, food, sport, how they travelled to school, playtime, play areas,
hobbies, time out of school, their local environment, their friends and I listened when stories emerged
– stories they wanted to tell me about good and bad behaviours, good and bad spaces, stories about
adult behaviours and the conflicts they feel. The stories that most interested were those that
constituted a sort of ‘event’ in the workshop and tended to be emotionally charged, (but there was also
enthusiasm in design, and in design solutions discovered). I asked them to design, both separately
and together- and was often asked to help and negotiate competing ideas in group exercises (I had
been introduced more often that not as the architect by children’s teachers).
In each school I visited I set out to carry out 4
workshops with 4-6 students over a 4 week period,
of between 1-2 hours each. Not all the students
turned up every week, not all the groups were
interested in the project, some decided not to attend
weeks 3 and 4 and others were positive and
enthusiastic and wanted to continue past the four
weeks. Some groups wanted to talk more than they
wanted to design and some wanted to design and
not answer my questions. Sixth formers tended to
be keen to discuss, 14 year olds tended to be
suspicious, concerned with what others in the group
thought, judged others in the group and wanted to
know whether my research would really achieve
anything (backing this up with their own stories).

10. 1. “Global Warming Panic”
DIALOGUE 1
V1: Has anyone seen that movie? The day after tomorrow?
The media portrayal of V2: Yes
environmental change loomed V1: Some people that that is going to happen, the day after
tomorrow.
large, the young peoples’ V3: Oh is that the one where the earth gets flooded? Yes,
stories expressed a real the world all gets flooded and stuff like that.
problem of how do we get V4: I gave all my clothes to the Tsunami when that
happened.
young people to behave V3: What do you wear then?
responsibly towards a broader V2: I don’t know what’s going to happen to the world, who
knows what’s going to really happen. Whether we’re
and future other whose world going to get finished off by flooding, whether it’s going
to fly into the Sun, whether we’re all going to die due to
we cannot know and where our global warming.
action has no immediate or V3: We’ve got a few years left.
apparent effect? V2: Whether the Magma’s going to come out and flood the
world with Magma. Who knows whether someone will
create a Zombie virus and bring Zombies, dead people
back to life. Who knows if aliens don’t exist and they
might destroy the earth. I’m just coming up with theories
about what might happen to the earth. I’m thinking be
might implode.

11. 2. “Is it our responsibility?”
DIALOGUE 2
AW: What do you think it would take to make people behave
more sustainably?
Whilst young people felt V1: There’s a lot of rubbish on the field, more bins around the
confused by media back for the school… […]
V2: Supermarkets are saying to people [to recycle], but they
portrayals of the dangers of put drinks in packets and wrappers […]
environmental change and V3: On some packing it says you can recycle it, but some
global warming they also people just chuck it on the floor […]
V2: Because one some games, computer games, there’s like
questioned me on whose plastic and you’ve got to separate it […] they should make
responsibility it was. Should an easier way to recycle.
I really be trying to change V3: It’s not just like the public getting it wrong because the
Government aren’t really doing much about it […] and
their and others they are sending it to India!
behaviours? AW: Yeah, I saw that TV programme too.
V2: Everyone is just worrying about the credit crunch, the credit
crunch at the moment.
V3: It might be about the public, but it is the Government as
well.

12. 3. “It costs more to be
environmentally friendly
doesn’t it?”

13. 4. “Greed, consumerism and other
vices?”

14. 5. “The problem of habit”

15. 6. “Children’s agency and lifestyle
change. No one will listen
anyway…”

16. 7. “Good spaces and bad spaces,
good and bad behaviours…”

17. 8. “Sexual difference and world-
views of young people?”

18. What does this mean for building sustainable schools?
If sustainable development is to be encouraged honestly and effectively, young people
will have to enter into a discussion of community, relation, social cohesion and all the
political and philosophical complexities this entails.
Furthermore, young people will have to reconcile the need for reduced consumption
with the consumerist norms of their peers – which is certainly a challenge for the
teaching profession. Exploring the question of living and dwelling – of feeling at home
- with young people presents a way to explore these issues and a way for architects to
respond. We need some very different ways of both teaching and designing in the
21st century if we are to address the social and environmental problems that climate
change will bring and important issues are being ignored: we may need to change the
structures, institutions and processes that govern how we live our lives, and the
inequalities we experience in our society. We need pedagogies of connection.

19. Thank you
andrea.wheeler@nottingham.ac.uk