“At times of change, the learners are the ones who will inherit the world, while the knowers will be beautifully prepared for a world that no longer exists.”
Alistair Smith
We were very glad to be invited to join an exciting new initiative taken by Open City. Open City is a charity that works with architecture and urban design, creating and carrying out a series of programmes that foster more engaging and accessible experiences of the city. Due to Covid-19 lockdown, they've decided to build an online platform to share design and architecture-themed learning activities to support parents at home.
Developed in partnership with Celebrating Architecture, they are now offering a series of at-home creative activities, "Learning From Architecture", a programme of design-based activities for home learning and teachers (https://learning.open-city.org.uk/). By inviting design educators, architects and teachers to collaborate, they will be hosting a wide range of regularly-updated architectural activities for young people of all ages.
We have been following a lot of projects and actions that have been taken online recently and it is amazing to see how fast organisations and educators have been able to adapt to this unexpected situation and have generously made many of their resources and activities available for anyone (and have even created new ones!).
It has also been interesting to notice a great diversity of proposals, not only regarding subjects and contents but methods and practices as well. All these new movements and initiatives have been showing us that in these new circumstances what we will be facing from now on is not only the challenge of "going online" and having to deal, teach or learn with new tools, new media and new communication interfaces. Considering our role as educators and/or facilitators particularly on the development of STEAM and Maker-centred architecture and design activities/projects, the actual situation instigates us to reflect on how we can continue to foster meaningful learning experiences through which we are able to engage children and trigger an on-going inquisitive and creative attitude towards the world.