As part of Fellows Fest tomorrow, I will be leading an outdoor urban adventure to the nearest green space: Victoria Embankment Gardens. This post is here to share some of my observations from my last visit a few weeks ago!
Want to give this a go yourself? Join us for the PGP session at RSA’s London Fellows Fest! I hope to see you on The Steps!
So often, we are stuck in urban spaces. Stuck inside. When we are outside, we too often focus on it as a site of transition. The space we walk through to get from one building to the next. Instead, I’m calling on you to be present. Don’t just walk through the space. Be in the space. Connect with the space. What new discoveries will you make? What will you see?
Glorious green canopies
In springtime the trees have full canopies, full of lush green leaves. Instead of rushing through the gardens to your next stop, take time to look up. What will you see?
Activity and movement among the greenery
The gardens is now a static place. From the wind blowing the green leaves, to the movement of people – the space is fully of activity. You will also see fitness equipment, a small playpark and a fitness route. The park encourages movement. You can also see much movement in the built and natural environment – from birds hopping about to the constant movement of the Millenium wheel or park fountains. What will you see moving when you are there?
Flora
The garden is in full bloom this spring – with explosions of colour throughout. Why not see if you can identify some of the plants? What is your favourite?
Fauna in the green
Sometimes we may just seen evidence of animals such as this feather, or you may be able to spot some birds or small mammals hopping around. Be present in the space and see what you can find.
Okay – these pictures are not great – but the best I could grab on my phone.
Memorialisation and memory
Even though this park is a green space, it is with one of the UK’s most urbanised spaces. Parks are often a site of memory and memorialisation. What can you see on your walk today?
What next?
I hope to see you at Fellows Fest – but if not – why not take your own urban adventure and discover what green spaces you can find in a city near you?
Anyone who has spoken with me about my work these last few months, there is a strong chance I’ve talked about Design Thinking. I think Design Thinking has immense potential to drive forward participatory action for real challenges, both inside and outside of education. My first introduction to Design Thinking came via Nous, who coached me through a project I was undertaking at my institution. Through this, I learned about The Design Council’s Double Diamond. I used this model to frame student- and staff-led journeys and to show how we could improve their everyday experiences. This was only the start for my journey into Design Thinking.
I’ve implemented Design Thinking in curriculum design, partnering with Dr Ann Kaegi to engage our students in programme transformation. In a teaching studies module, I’ve worked with Dr Kelly Dockerty to integrate Design Thinking as a frame for real-world problem-solving. Finally, I’ve just seen The Transformative Potential of Design Thinking in Learning Development published in the last few weeks. I worked on this article with Catherine Turton (Southampton Solent) to frame the possibilities we see for Design Thinking. It feels like there is no end to the potential of Design Thinking!
Academically, I’ve been very inspired by the work of IDEO and Stanford’s d.school. One of my favourite books is Design for Social Change, which has inspired me to further reflect on how we can empower our students to take action via Design Thinking to challenge the status quo. It’s exciting stuff. There is also a raft of additional works from d.school, supporting design for belonging, crafting convictions with a ‘you need a manifesto‘ and the magic of telling visual stories with data. It should be no surprise that I’m keen to unleash this potential across teaching as well.
Design Thinking as a toolkit for students in education
Each trimester, we host an enhancement week, which provides us with an opportunity to do something a little different with our students. This can break the normal moulds of teaching, and this year we tried something quite different. On the Monday of enhancement week, we enjoyed a trip to Densholme Farm, where we showcased alternative educational approaches to our students. For Thursday, a large team of us envisioned an event to bring the whole school together. We decided to focus on a core disadvantaged group: care experienced, adopted, child-looked-after and unaccompanied children. From this start, we designed an event to promote working relationally with children, young people, and adults who have such experiences.
As you can tell, I made the case for design thinking.
The thing is, there are just so many systemic problems related to supporting these vulnerable groups. But there is also a lot of potential to do things better. My main contribution sat in the middle of the day. We kicked off with some expert talks from some of our recent graduates now working with such children and young adults. I then took over to look at how we could meet some of these challenges with real solutions. This gave me just over an hour for a crash course in Design Thinking.
Design Thinking in an hour (and a bit)
I started with a simple message. Too often, solutions are designed without truly understanding the problem (or even identifying the right problem), leading to ineffective outcomes. It is those who are in power that define the problem and define the solution.
No wonder they often get it wrong. With the input of those it impacts, solutions usually fail to be iterative, collaborative and creative. Above all, they fundamentally start on the wrong track, as user needs are not understood. However, with design thinking, it can be different.
Starting with empathy to understand individuals’ needs and experiences helps frame the whole question/project the right way. Then, using all those people to work on the solutions employs more brains for the task at hand. More people involved generally leads to much better solutions, especially when it includes those directly involved.
Getting practical with Design Thinking
So! I got them to start mapping the challenges. The issues came from many sources: their placements, personal experience, news and television, relational experience and, of course, our guest speakers. We started out by just mapping this all down. ALL the issues we had seen so far:
I asked one person per table to stand up and hold their sheets up.
With 10 groups, a LOT of issues were identified. Too many. Too overwhelming.
So we picked one per table. Just one for each group to focus on, developing this into a problem statement. For example:
How might we support adopted and care-experienced children to reach their academic potential?
(Despite disrupted schooling, inconsistent support and the challenge of navigating multiple care placements)
From problem statement to ideas
From this position, it is then possible to ideate. I asked all students to fold an A3 sheet in half three times. This gave them a sheet with eight boxes to work with. In box one, they had to write their problem statement and their name. I then gave them a short pitch on blue skies thinking, prompting them to DREAM BIG. A common issue is that we are often limited by the very systems and structures that bind us (or are the problem in the first place). We can truly develop innovative solutions by breaking free from ‘what is’ by pushing towards ‘what can be’. That foundation laid, I then asked them to use box 2 to develop one solution to their problem statement.
The true joy of Design Thinking is about using all of the brains available. There is no point in keeping those sheets in front of the person who framed the problem. I wanted to make the most of the people in the room. So, as soon as everyone finished penning their first idea into box 2, I asked them all to trade their sheet with someone from another table. Now, everyone had someone else’s problem statement in front of them. So, in box 3, they developed an idea to solve that problem. This pattern was repeated, passing the sheets on and on to different tables until boxes 2 through 7 were filled with various potential solutions or ideas for the presented problem.
The results: Wrapping the activity up
With 10 tables, we had 10 problems in the room (with everyone on that table taking a shared problem forward). Passing those individual sheets around meant that 71 sheets were launched into the room, and by the end of the session, each one of those sheets was filled with six ideas. This gave us a total of 426 ideas to address some of these problems in the room. All this was achieved by utilising everyone present, giving everyone a voice, and getting everyone involved. Most importantly, the whole session started with empathy by listening to those expert voices, reflecting on lived experience, and drawing upon what was seen on placements.
The final task for the session was to return those sheets to their owners. This was a little chaotic as 71 people (who didn’t necessarily know each other) worked to find the owner of the problem statement. Once all sheets returned, I then invited students to reflect on the ideas presented, and consider how they might take one of these ideas forward into a prototype. While developing and prototyping is a significant aspect of Design Thinking, only so much can be done in an hour! Closing the session this way at least encouraged them to think through the next stages to take it to action.
Design really is a team sport, and Design Thinking gets everyone involved. While this was an artificial scenario, I hope the students learned much from this session. We centre participatory research at the heart of what we do, and Design Thinking provides a framework through which this can be operationalised. Taking it outside the context of research and into practice is also very useful for their future careers – where they are likely to be doing stuff, as opposed to taking a more academic research approach.
I had the great pleasure of undertaking my level 1 Forest School training last week. It’s something I’ve had on my wish list for some time, and I finally carved out a day to commit to this. Forest School aims to deliver a long-term, learner-centred experience that supports exploration and scaffolded risk taking in a natural outdoor wooded area. In undertaking the training, I aim to be able to deliver such sessions in the future – but that is something a few levels away yet!
The training was delivered by Dr Jo Traunter and Kerrie Lee, both colleagues in the School of Education at the University of Hull. The training itself was also hosted in the beautiful grounds of Thwaite Hall Botanic Gardens in Cottingham. Forest School training at the University is currently only available to staff/students – so a good reason to study at Hull ????
So what did we get up to at Forest School?
I had no idea the Thwaite Hall Botanic Gardens has a fully-equipped classroom. It was a brilliant setting, and we were introduced to the concept of Forest School and where it originated. The ethos of ‘everyone helps’ hit straight at the start, as everyone helped to set up desks, boil kettles and sort out the chairs. The session was brief – giving us chance to get outside and cover the essentials of level 1. Forest School is based on six principles: long term, nature, community, risk, hollistic learning and leadership. More can be found out on the Forest School Association website.
Site safety walk
We started by walking the site, highlighting any potential dangers and identifying the boundaries. As Forest School aims to give learners freedom (and bounded risks), the ability for them to navigate freely is important – within the identified boundaries.
We also played some games to help ensure no-one gets lost. Everyone was given a number, and as a register, we’d each shout our numbers in turn. The Leaders were 1 and 15, ensuring they started and ended the roll call. This was a much quicker way of ensuring everyone stayed together. We also played the 1-2-3 where are you hide and seek safety game.
With all the safety covered, we were able to work together to carry all the tools and other required items into the outdoor area for the Forest School session.
Den building
Yes! We got to build outdoor shelters. We were given access to some tarpaulin, pegs, strings and scissors. Other than that, we had our creativity and whatever materials we could find. One of the rules of Forest School is to leave no mark, so we were not to pull down any branches or damage the natural environment. An important part of the end of the day was also to disband the shelters! Building the shelter was a brilliant team-based activity, and we really got into it! I mean… I would have happily done this all day.
Lighting a fire
Before starting with the fire, there was lots of focus on how to keep safe. A rope was used to set boundaries, ensuring no one gets near to the fire – a useful reminder for when working with children (and also in the ethos of safe and managed risks!).
I’ve never used flint and steel before, so was absolutely thrilled at the opportunity to give this a go! We all were given a bull dog clip to bury in the ground, and a cotton wool ball to hold with it. We were able to practice setting the cotton wool ball on fire, before throwing the whole thing into the fire pit. As the fire began to take, we all gathered dry wood to build it up. Once fully blazing, we then had marshmallows and crumpets to toast. DELICIOUS! (Also a big thanks to Kerrie and Jo for bringing along gluten-free snacks too, which helped me feel super included!).
Tool talks
As part of Forest School level 1, we had to learn the use of at least three tools. The key message on the use of tools was focused around safe usage! We learned to use knives to whittle and shears and saws to cut. When utilising any tool, we stool in a plastic hoop to indicate the safety zone. This is a useful way to help children keep a safe distance from each other. Part of the fun here was to state we are ‘Activating the Blood Zone’ – a useful phrase to help kids remember. For each tool, we had to wear a safety glove, wear a high-vis vest and stand in the hoop. This all helped to focus on safety first.
Doing all this felt a little silly for an all-adult group. But it wasn’t. It was a good reminder of how to keep safety to the fore, allowing young people to experiment as part of their Forest School experience, but to do so safely.
Identifying foliage
An ongoing part of our day was to identify different plants and trees. While this session was run in Spring, there was more leaf litter than leaves of the trees so we used Autumnal identification sheets. It was actually harder than I expected, but at this point in the season the leaves were pretty degraded. I also had some fun experiment with AI identification – but that felt a little out of the spirit of Forest School.
Heading back to the city
As a group, we had an absolutely amazing day in the Forest School. However, sadly, the day had to come an end. In the spirit of Forest School, we worked to clear up all our mess, take down our shelters and ensure we left no trace – just footprints. I really can’t wait to start level 2 – though have to wait for a new season (as it has to be in a different season to level 1).
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