Architecture for kids podcast with Victoria Thornton OBE Board Member at Thornton Education Trust

Creating such a brilliant method to bring the many voices out front stage rather than hidden in text allows for an incredible dialogue to flourish into the future and Thornton Education Trust is delighted to be part of that journey.

Transcript

UNKNOWN: 0:00

you

SPEAKER_01: 0:09

Hello and welcome to another episode of Architecture for Kids podcast. I'm your host, António Cablón. I'm a trained architect, an architectural educator and founding director of award-winning Architecture for Kids CIC. In this podcast, I'm going to talk to practitioners and creatives that share the same passion as I do, to inspire and to engage children and young people to shape their built environment and the creative industries. The podcast is brought to you in focusing on empowering young people in the built environment through exemplars, research and building a community of practitioners. Roles past and present include Founder, Open House Worldwide, My City Tool, Accelerate and Architecture in Schools, Learning Committee, Design Museum, Former President, Architecture Association, School of Architecture and Director, Architecture for Kids CIC. Victoria, thank you for coming to talk to me today and I'm looking forward to our conversation.

SPEAKER_00: 1:46

Pleasure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:47

What subjects were you good at school?

SPEAKER_00: 1:49

I liked art and I liked maths, I liked languages but actually most probably more excelled in maths and art but more so than maths, most probably than the art.

SPEAKER_01: 2:00

And did all the dating first your career choices and where do you are today?

SPEAKER_00: 2:05

Well, I did not talk, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I've gone to Italy for a year and I came back with my partner and we were living above Warren Street Chief Station but I needed to get a job and so I was looking around to where I could walk to work. We call it now the 60 Minutes City but that seemed to be unusual at that time. And I was lucky enough in retrospect to find a job at the Warren Street British Architects running conferences and lectures and exhibitions. So that really is how I stumbled into architecture and carried on in that vein to this day.

SPEAKER_01: 2:48

You've done extraordinary things. You are a household name. Can you tell us a little bit about this treasure trove until now?

SPEAKER_00: 2:55

I suppose the one key thing that changed it, apart from listening to all the top architects of the world, which was incredible, being casted those conversations about what architecture is about and what it means. But it came down to a basic thing of Christmas lecture for kids. And it was a bit like the hours stuff in the morning at the picture house and they're all climbing well over 400 um but there were talk was by ian adams by member correctly who was really a pioneer of architecture and education of children um and uh i just came out of that building known to see my environment and tops of buildings which i hadn't really seen portland place up to that time which seems extraordinary now in retrospect but that was the sort of starting point recognizing that everybody needs to have that point to kind of click to engage them so that sort of took me for a while to get my head around it but in between from there I decided to set up a whole lot of architectural study trips for architects going around the world and I started the best one in Barcelona hoping that everybody else wanted to go to Barcelona for New Year which actually ended up true and I had Bob Eliza as the guide and Mark Burry so it was a really extraordinary time and those tours in a way was about actually seeing architecture in the flesh because I could see lots of buildings even in London where they you felt they were taking references from pictures from bush grass rather than if they'd seen them maybe they would have taken a slightly different view on it or route or whatever so it was a way to just open I can't think and it was actually very new at that time nobody really was doing it on the scale that we were and so we went around the world to Japan America lots of times Europe lots of exhibitions the only place that didn't really get to strangely was India and China so those are sort of gaps in my architectural viewing career Then I sort of, having done that, I then at that time was getting a lot of non-architects interested in the architectural study trips, which therefore reflected on, are we really, we talk about it's open for everybody and it's really important, architectural people, but there was no real reach for them to engage there. So the tours were part of that. And I suppose that started me me think more about how could one do that and one of the ways actually was being co-author for a guide to contemporary architecture of london so i was also put three and my partner husband uh what did all six sometimes we would argue so i thought maybe i'll leave that one for a while and go on to the next edition there was always a background so i was doing a lot of other architectural activity but up to that point in when i then looked at open house in nineteen 92 I've already engaged in it but I was around architecture about architecture of architecture but I wasn't in architecture it's a little kind of strange world to be in sometime but I somehow managed to survive

SPEAKER_01: 6:29

you were doing a lot of work with children and young people and community engagement that started with open house do you ever tell us about

SPEAKER_00: 6:36

trying to look at it from a different perspective and I think with open house which was great you realize all people from all walks of life were really engaging with it. The open house idea was opening eyes, minds and doors and so we just thought well okay, eyes can get that, minds can we have that conversation and doors were literally but we needed to get some open which we ended up with 800 I think at the end. But in that, that walks of life, so the teachers as well and they would come in saying this would be really great you know, our kids never get out they never go and see their city and yet open house was for Londoners the whole point was it was free that was one point and two that it was for Londoners it wasn't a kind of tourist event at all in fact we I have to say we discouraged that because we realized that there's sort of six or eight million people to engage with and that would take quite a lot of effort and time so actually the sort of progression because sort of open house is an educational event but if one had said that no one would have turned up so actually having that just openness and equality as it were everybody could have a view and say was a way of just thinking about how you learn as well having done that then started looking for funding to just try and develop some programs and that started with actually a doctor school or ended up with a a design and technology teacher, which was actually Neil Pinder, and looking at how we could actually get it into the curriculum wall and finding ways to get architecture or the built environment, as we would call it now, into the curriculum. There was that one program, and then we built architecture in schools programs through some other funding, which was actually Heritage Rotary Fund, but I never used the word heritage. I used to say architectural legacy. Heritage has a lot of connotation that there were. And then we started building Accelerate into university. So the programs came out of Open House as a jumping point to have those conversations, but actually saying, how can we engage different age groups through the work we're doing? That's really how it came about. And what is great to see, you know, so many of those programs that exist after, you know, with Fortissus and mine as well, that they are building upon it as well, which I think is even great.

SPEAKER_01: 9:17

From those first programs you designed to the programs that exist now, how much have we moved forward?

SPEAKER_00: 9:23

That's a difficult one. If we look at policy, most probably not. I think any of us in this area would say it hasn't really moved forward. There are sort of inchings, but you have to say architecture per se as a subject is not going to happen. And actually there are other ways and maybe better ways to try and introduce it. So if you think of geography in architecture, you think of sustainability in architecture, you can kind of cut the cake in so many ways and engage actually a lot more teachers through that as well. So rather than just being in silo in one place, you actually can spread it across the whole curriculum if you have the teacher's engagement in it because the teachers are doing the teaching at the end of the day with the rest of us. We can come in, bring programs. We help devise them with them, support them. But at the end of the day, they have to take them on board and bring their whole class with it. There has been some encouragement, mainly because there's more, maybe more organizations that they tend to be in London who are doing this type of work. There was a whole lot of architecture centers at one time. We did a tremendous work around the country, but with funding getting cut and saying that most of those had gone, unfortunately. So there was, it was being increased and finding ways to engage children, young people. And partly that was through CABE at that time, Commission for Architecture and Builder Environment. So there was some funding in place, but government policy was, it came with it. At least you could talk somewhere in government about it. Now there's nowhere to talking government about it. So it's really at the local government level, maybe some places. And I think that's why I would say, I can't say it's a positive. And I think the one real thing at the moment is that when we take creativity out of the school, we go to our architecture, what we're doing is taking out the curriculum and decimating it at the moment, particularly us in design and design technology, but we say using the things. So the creative subjects have been pulled out of all the state schools but the private schools are still doing it so what's going to happen in a generation we're going to end up with preachers who actually are a big economic as well as everything else are going to come from that private sector and those state kids as it were are not going to have the opportunity because they haven't had it in any of their curriculum it will be outside of school always and I think that That is a disservice, but actually terrible that that is happening. So there is kind of, it's not great, let's put it that way. Having said that, there are a lot more organization individuals who are trying to do something. But teachers, again, are up to their eyes with everything else. So asking them to do something else extra is really, really hard. But if they're engaged, then they're really engaged. And there are some fantastic teachers It is a hard one when it's in the school system. And that's really a problem because, you know, if you take Department of Education, you know, it's a massive department. And with all the other things going on, it's really, really hard. You can talk about, you know, saying if you've got new schools or refurbished schools, who I'm not much hearing at the moment. But really what we're doing is, you know, it's not really on the Richter scale. It's just a tiny bit we can engage with and use that change as something. But in total, I think we just need to, I think beyond that, we need to re-evaluate the curriculum in creativity. I mean, creating gets changed and teaching never gets set up with it. But I think in terms of the creative side of it it's just been really a missed opportunity but I don't think anybody's got the answer to it. Ken Robinson everybody talks about Ken Robinson again a little while back now but he understood creativity and education and I think most of us always go back to that it's just taking that and taking it forward.

SPEAKER_01: 14:06

Your opinion would be the ideal thing to review the curriculum?

SPEAKER_00: 14:10

I think it has to come from an educators we're just a part of it but I think it has to come from the heart like everything has to come from the heart of that education is from them so we can help the support from why we think it's important how but I think we have to say it comes through the education system the courses the university courses there's a ones and perhaps what we need to be doing is thinking about those university courses like career How can we engage with that productively and actually start saying how do you design a new curriculum? But I think also you have to say, I think there's a real change in how people learn these days. I mean, you can see that plays become much more important than it used to be as ballet. Obviously, technology is another part of it.

SPEAKER_01: 15:08

I have another question which is about the curriculum and these programs that you have initially designed. Are they aligned with the curriculum or do they take the curriculum into consideration?

SPEAKER_00: 15:20

I think you have to take it generally within the curriculum because it's overloaded already. They've got to be able to show that they've built knowledge and understanding in whatever they do, any project. So if you're going in with something totally different because that's what you think, it's the wrong approach. to go understand what their issues, what their pains are, and you respond to that. And the other thing is you have to also learn, I think we did and others do, was when you say, for instance, Architectural Schools Program and you had Sarah Phillips, I'm sure, talking about it, is that you had to have some more like a training workshop with the architects to understand what the curriculum, how the teachers had to teach, and they know how to teach and the teachers are to understand that creative part which is most probably not necessarily part of their DNA as it were. So it's trying to understand both sides so you're listening to be able to create a collaboration but you really need to do that to make it a successful one and also to be able to replicate it because I think there's lots of one-off ones but if you really want to make step change you have to in a way replicate to actually show it's there and people want it, continue teaching it, then you start seeing, yeah, there's a banger in this. What

SPEAKER_01: 16:48

do you think is more receptive and less receptive to community engagement? Are the architects, the clients, the parents?

SPEAKER_00: 16:57

It depends where you're coming from. So if you're a developer, it's kind of a business case for it. And it might be because it needs to be in planning. I think some of the really good aspects real good developers are definitely doing it. It's just the rest are not. They're trying to get through the planning system. The architectural world really likes to do it more, but it's a client who doesn't want to do it. So this is us saying, how do you embed working with children and young people into your own practice, which isn't necessarily attached to your clients? And with that, I will say that say there's 57 architects in this country if each architect just spent 10 work with 10 kids a year for an hour so it's 10 hours a year we would reach half a million kids every year that's really a sort of step change and actually I don't think the profession would feel really proud about that because I think it loves to do that so I think it's where you come from parents it depends you have to remember it's not in our education system we get this horrible circuit thing, that it's not a non-education system, so we're not aware of this, and if we're not aware of it, how do we promote it as such? So I think it's a duty of the profession, of the whole sector, building environment, to actually say, okay, it's time in the 21st century, it's time for a change, a rethink about this. And I think there are some happening now, so it's not a business in isolation, but there's a little what's going on at the moment. And I think one of our hopes is that, you know, you get that groundswell from Beauchemin, which I really think often works, and then policy or government starts recognising it. But at the moment, there's a big gap between the two of them. But a variety of reasons. We know it's complex. I'm not naive about that.

SPEAKER_01: 19:01

You set up the Thornton Education Trust, which also co-produces this Architectural Kids podcast. Well, tell us about the ethos of the trust and the work.

SPEAKER_00: 19:11

One set it up, and I always go, tech, and get coming, or tech, I'll check that. It's a bit of some bourgeois before we break. But it really is about our conversations. The set of steps is not so odd. It was really coming from all my experience. Actually, Neil Pinder's a trustee as well. It's coming from our own experience of saying, yes, there's all this great stuff going on, but how do we... evidence it more and also we need to build capacity so personally I did it once through another project program I've done them for a long time mainly for the team too most of the work I have to say but I didn't I thought there was like a gap it's great there's all these going on but when we see there's several million kids in the UK we're not really hitting any not even on the Richter scale to be in and true So we said, okay, let's be positive. How can we sort of change that, try and nudge it forward? So really, TET is really about actually trying to highlight what's going on and encourage others to do it as well, whichever program. And so we started with looking at award system, which we thought, well, there's no awards, for example, in this area, especially within the architecture of both environment professions. So So let us put a board system together. First of all, we did architecture and education for teachers. But of course, pandemic was still around. And actually, they're very difficult to get hold of because we're all so busy the other way around. So in the pandemic, we actually started looking at informal learning, going out of the classroom, whatever that meant. And therefore, we came up with Inspired Future Generations Awards, which really was to hire who's finding out who was out there doing this work because you could feel it was happening and you felt like there's a bit of a guy's going on the last five six years especially in younger objects for wanting to say I want to do something more than just sit in front of my screen a real sense of that I'd also saw the planning application curing had much more stakeholder engagement tick box there as well so we felt there might be some people out there in individuals doing work and some great work. So the awards are a way to find them and then highlight them and then celebrate them. But that was at the end a bit. The awards are there to actually take those examples and a way to put them as like case studies or examples so other people can then say, oh, that's a great idea. I can replicate it. So not to try and always reinvent the wheel because there's lots of energy going in that, but say, look, there's a reference here. That seemed to be fantastic. So the awards have always been in that way, and they reach out to children, out to school hours, as it were, and youth engagement. But it's all about who is doing it and what projects. So they might come from practices. They come from not-for-profits. There's Archimedes, etc., placed, and there's I'm Wes Orden. So it wasn't just practices and also not just architectures. Planners do a lot of this work, can do a lot of this work, and actually developers doing this work. So really we just wanted to bring them out. And the other thing with it was to, in one way, do bold. In fact, to create a community of practice because it didn't exist or no one valued this kind of engagement. And this is the early engagement when you're saying there's a community or a neighbourhood or even a master plan. How are we going to find out what people really desire, not a certain one, desire, to have that? What would make it a healthy environment and wellbeing, one they want to be in and grow up in? Because the future generation is the perfect ones, the teenagers, the young people, because hopefully they will be there. So they're representing their siblings, the younger ones, but they're also representing to their parents, but they're the ones who are likely to be in that place, especially on the big projects as such. That was another way of thinking about using gold, working with young people and seeing that. So I think for us, that's been incredible. We're now in our third year. More and more internationally, we're seeing examples coming through, and that's good because you learn from them as well. So what we're seeing with this and we've just done an empowering environments report which actually we assess the awards and what was coming through with those so it can be you know diverse ways that people engage with young people so it can be through community engagement it can be through procurement it can be through mentoring it can be through research just through a community so it's all different way that you can engage it's not just one way as some of them are obviously direct through the client but you don't need to do that so there's additional ways that you can inspire them engage them but actually hear and have equal not conversation but also give them skills and you have to learn skills as well I think we sometimes forget who's learning the most sometimes whether they're learning more we think they're learning but actually

SPEAKER_01: 25:05

you have a call out now

SPEAKER_00: 25:06

So one's coming up to the 20th of October. I mean, it's the same time each year. The categories are great from community, sustainability, well-being. So it's that kind of theme. Or actually just doing projects with a long-term project or a one-off project for young people and youth and then another one for children. So we actually have, then we have best organization and the best inspiring individual of the year. So in total, we have about 16 categories, which is staggering in its And then we have an awards ceremony and reception, which we have here in the building center as well. So it's a great, someone said it was just like a big hug where they came realizing lots of other people were like minds. And I think if we can build that, it's nothing else. We've done a quite good amount.

SPEAKER_01: 25:59

And who's the judging panel of the awards?

SPEAKER_00: 26:02

The judging panel is a range because we do look at higher education as well so we would have we had for instance Rosie Parnell from Newcastle University last year and some who are practitioners some who actually are not properly engaged with that and media as well with it I think what's interesting about the higher education one is that we also looked at there's another report so we've been really busy trying to say okay what's going on let's step back and let's kind of evaluate that a bit. So with the higher education, we realize actually this step change with the professions starts at university. At that point, you're going into your professional career. And is there any time allotted to that curriculum at the university, which includes engagement with people, not even people, let's say young people and children? You realize, actually, so we did a report and just a desktop to say which schools of architecture can we clearly see they do some engagement, which is either outside the university or that they have their own programs with inside. And it was staggering that the ones we looked at, 50% did, but 50% didn't. And the second thing was they didn't really have any curriculum it's usually someone in trust they might do once a year maybe two programs a year but it wasn't just embedded and at the end of the day architecture built about is about people so you think that there is really need to have this change going on in the curriculum to actually know how to engage with people right from the start and I think then that glows in your practice there on and it becomes part of the DNA of your practice or in a practice which is what we think is the way one way forward is to ensure it's in the DNA it's like the social value we could put you know quotes but it's like saying yeah we automatically do this and our staff and team are automatically coming they know we do this type of thing so that's what we're doing with the higher education we want to highlight a bit more because I think there's we might not know them all but our like to see, know of it, think that every school of architecture did some of this kind of work within there, right at the beginning, in there, further along. So that's one of the ways, when we're thinking about it, what needs else to be done. So there seems to be always quite a lot of work coming through on there.

SPEAKER_01: 28:57

Well, the reports, do you want to talk about any other in particular, and what kind of pertinent findings did you come across?

SPEAKER_00: 29:04

Well, the footprint was of There is an increase in engagement, so that is good. The question really is, when we talk about co-design, are the children and young people at the heart of it? And I think we bring them in, but we're not saying to them, actually, you decide it. And that can be quite a complicating thing to say they don't, but you're there to support that. And sometimes we sort of go in and we say it's co-design. One of the issues also, if it's long turn is you know if it's going to take five and six years what happens for those young people so what's your program doing coping with kids going in and out of your program but not thinking it's declining because the fourth kid's going to say how do you bring that in I was talking with cement fields about that saying what yours is a long term big absolutely development how do you ensure that the work, your stakeholder engagement you're doing at the moment, young people, actually is sort of like a plan throughout the time, let's say now, because we get back to funding. So the other thing, so there's a lot of design and putting children, young people's ideas at the centre, and I think that is, in a way, they can do it and we're there to support it, I think, a lot of the time. But that takes a lot of work as well, and you have to accept it The other side, on our practical side, very little funding still goes into this area. So everyone talks about it, but actually there's very little. And if you look at any budgets on particular level things, you know, it's a time, if it's on there, this kind of stakeholder engagement, it's very little and it doesn't go, it's usually to getting through planning, but then it stops and things. So there's some kind of hard facts in there, but the other side of it is the number and types of skills that young people learn from it and I'm saying those who are doing it learn as well but you do have those soft skills which are really incredible to take on within their lives so it isn't just about being very creative but it's actually being thinking about problem solving leadership just practical skills as well to give them the confidence that they can do something so there's a lot of things in these kind of programs. It's not as straightforward, but that's what's that complexity in a way is what's the greater.

SPEAKER_01: 31:44

Victoria, is there a question I should have asked you that I haven't asked you? And what is that question?

SPEAKER_00: 31:49

I think my main one is that there's incredible knowledge coming out through these podcasts and it's actually how we can, how they can be collected but amplified to help this whole process. I think this is a major way of just getting people to think about it a bit by doing this. Very easy, casual, which is really nice. But I think there's a lot of value in them. I mean, it's kind of being able to pull those out. So I think I was throwing it back to you, but it helps us because it helps us find those others to build that community of practice and community of practitioners. I

SPEAKER_01: 32:29

enjoyed it. Thank you very much to my guests today, to all the listeners, and please subscribe to Architecture for Kids podcast and leave your rating and the review. Recommend us to your friends and family and to find out more about it visit our websites and follow us on and please join me again next week for another episode of Architecture for Kids podcast, brought to you in collaboration with the Built Environment Trust, the Thornton Education Trust and the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University.