Architecture for kids podcast with Venetia Wolfenden Founding Director of Urban Learners

I love the idea of lots of different people and organisations coming together to share their stories about, and reasons for engaging with young people in the built environment. Many voices are better than one in spreading our collective message that’s it’s critical to include and inform YP in making decisions about their Cities.

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 Cablão. 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 collaboration with the Built Environment Trust, the Thornton Education Trust and the Wells School of Architecture, Cardiff University. My guest today is Venetia Wolfenden. Venetia is an architect and educator who delivers architectural learning resources that inspire young people to explore art, architecture and city spaces and equip them with creative skills that support learning in and out of the classroom. In 2018, Venetia founded Urban Learners with the aim to bring diversity, equity and inclusion into the profession and to encourage all students to engage with creativity at school. Now an award-winning organization, Urban Learners have provided creative outreach programs for Sculpture in the City, the Canda Myline and Grimshaw Foundation. Venetia co-leads Celebrating Architecture and previously led Open Cities education team and prior to that was involved Venetia, thank you for coming to talk to me today and I'm looking forward to our conversation.

SPEAKER_00: 1:50

Hello, Antonio and everyone. I'm very happy to be here and thank you for asking me to come along today.

SPEAKER_01: 1:56

What was your favourite subject at school and what was your subject that you were good at at school?

SPEAKER_00: 2:03

I think my favourite subject at school was art, possibly one that I was better at because I never considered myself particularly academic at school, but I think I was quite good at geography, which I think geography and art do come together quite well for architecture.

SPEAKER_01: 2:18

That was very to lead on to my next question. If what you were good at and what you enjoyed helped you to choose when your career path and where you are today in your career?

SPEAKER_00: 2:27

I think so. I actually wanted to study art, but wasn't allowed to. For me, architecture was next best thing. And I actually went to Kingston, back then Kingston Polytechnic, where architecture is in the School of Art, was the most fantastic place to study for three years. for me because I was introduced to architecture academically through art and design but I was also inspired to become an architect or to study architecture because very close family friends or godparent figures used to look after me and my sister in London for a week every summer and they had both worked at the architectural association they're not architect and we used to go there for lunch and I used to think this is such an amazing place one day I want to go there I think I've always wanted to be involved in the world of art

SPEAKER_01: 3:12

and architecture. You've been doing a lot of work with children and young people. How did it come about your work with children and young people?

SPEAKER_00: 3:20

It's a great question. I was working as an architect and most of the work I was working on or the buildings that I was designing were education buildings and I was heavily involved in the Building Schools for the Future program in the early 2000s. The architects I worked for were part of a consortium led by the contractor That's how it worked. We used to have to go and do a consultation process. It's really what it was with the children at the schools we were redesigning. And these were led by the educationalists who were part of the consortium. And I went along to one and I was really disappointed in how it was conducted. It was asking the children what colour they might like their lockers to be or how their toilets should be laid out, which I know is important, but it really felt that they were missing something quite major in actually thinking about how we're getting the children's point of view about how they use their schools and how they feel in their schools and how they learn in their schools. My child was quite young at that point, primary school, and I started doing some workshops at his school and I started connecting with learning pedagogies. I was researching for work as in designing buildings and then for understanding the different ways of learning within schools. We're creating architectural workshops for very young children at the that point because my son was six I think and then I got more and more involved and I decided that I would be quite good at this and I'd enjoy it. I had a friend who had a friend who worked at Open City and I started volunteering with them. I wanted to work for them and Victoria said go and get a qualification so I did. I went and studied MA in design education at Goldsmiths which I really enjoyed. I was a mature student and it gave me a huge amount of confidence actually. I suddenly realised that I can write. I'm not just about making marks on paper and coming up with amazing, well, hopefully amazing three-dimensional objects or spaces, but that I could actually write as well. It gave me a huge amount of confidence and I then went and worked for Open City as their education manager. That's how it all happened.

SPEAKER_01: 5:31

Just to clarify, these schools you were working with, they were primary schools or secondary schools?

SPEAKER_00: 5:36

Within the Building Schools for the Future programme, I designed both, but it was actually a consultation process or... it really wasn't participatory design. Let's call it consultation process with secondary schools. But I did design both primary and secondary through that program.

SPEAKER_01: 5:51

You know, there's a slight balance between you as an expert and the children and the young people points of view as a designer. What is your stance on that?

SPEAKER_00: 6:01

That's a really good question that's very hard to answer. The work that I do with Urban Learners at the moment is more concentrated around learning programs that connect to the curriculum. But when I did my My MA, I did actually, my major research thesis was around participatory design or co-design with children for a particular space. I actually went back to my child's primary school and I had already been involved in designing the playground and for them. And we did involve every single pupil in that school, but they were sort of choosing parts of a playground in effect. But what I did for my thesis was work with year threes who are seven and eight, I think. wasn't my son's year and I worked with them to design a new wall within the playground a low wall that was a boundary for the nursery playground within the larger playground and it was a really interesting process because as you say the designer is the expert designer and actually I'm very glad I looked at my thesis this morning because somebody who greatly has influenced or very much influenced that research at the time was Jeremy Till there's a fantastic book he edited or a series of essays called Architecture and Participation which he edited with Peter Blundell Jones and one other when he was at Sheffield University and he talks about the expert citizen i.e. the designer and the citizen expert i.e. the community that you're designing for. I then very much thought about the seven and eight year olds I was working with as the expert school pupils and knowing their playground and understanding how they wanted to play in the playground but also they became researchers and they became, they were buddied up with one of the nursery classes and they interviewed and worked with a three and four year old in the nursery class to what they might want in this wall. The wall became an active wall that had objects, shelves, blackboards, plants, whatever, all as part of it. And what I did in terms of the design process was I created a module out of cardboard, I did a lot of cutting, created these squares and out a corrugated or corrugated sandwich card which you can stick sticks in and it's a really simple but effective way of creating three-dimensional objects or pupils split into groups of three or four can't remember and they each designed sections of the wall and they thought i had to think about scale we did quite a lot of learning around scale and proportion they measured the playground using their bodies and so they got an idea of scale we looked at materials we looked at all of the themes that they'd have to know in order to design and is you have to give them the skills as well. That's really important as the expert designer. And they came up with some fantastic designs. They made them and they drew them. And I took them all away, photographed them, categorised them, looked at them, and then came up with a design using their designs. And that's how I did it. And I think because it was a simple object, well, it was kind of complex wall, but simple as an object in a way. And it's quite easy to do that. I think for a building itself, it's more complicated. But that was how I did that that was the research that I did it didn't get built unfortunately but I feel that that process and actually the outcome was giving architects the tools to go into schools and can design the children that was this inclusion of the research but in order to do that I said it was active research I suppose in the sense that I worked with 37 to 8 year olds and about 10 4 year olds in order to come up with a design and a system or a methodology for participatory design with young children.

SPEAKER_01: 9:45

You also pointed out something quite interesting, which is creating methodology that enables professionals to work with children and young people. We hear quite a lot of professionals saying, but I never worked with children. I don't know what to do. Is this methodology you have ready available that you can roll out to people?

SPEAKER_00: 10:02

I'm very happy to share my thesis with anybody. It's incredibly chunky. Probably a little out of date now, though, because I finished in 2012, I think. Working with children, it's not a scary as it seems I think if you have your own child it's probably easier with your own children because you understand what's going on I think that's where practitioners like myself and there's quite a few of us around yourself I think that's where we become quite important middlemen really between the expert citizen and the citizen expert actually because there is a whole raft of vocabulary that us as experts use in the built environment the young people just do not know what you're talking about communication is absolutely absolutely key and stripping the rhetoric is absolutely key the kindness is key you don't know what's happened to that child in the morning you don't know where they sit within the hierarchy of the classroom i think kindness is really important i try really hard it's not always easy so as a middleman i think we're really important between the expert the teacher and the children i know as i'm an architect i feel i can say that i think as architects we feel that we can do everything but actually when you talk with children you can get asked any question you have to be ready for anything. And we are not experts in answering all those questions. I think knocking ourselves down a peg or two, really thinking about how we communicate, what architecture is, our ideas that the young people understand. And it's fine to use the vocabulary we use, but explain what it means. Don't just use it in a sentence, assuming that everybody's going to understand what you're saying. And actually, I said recently in a talk with Grimshaw Architects, if you can communicate to children successfully, you can communicate to anybody. So actually built environment professionals, the more you work with young people, the more you will probably be able to communicate your ideas to everyone.

SPEAKER_01: 11:49

I remember when I was a student of architecture, one of my tutors once told me, you have to speak like you would speak to your grandmother and she has to understand what you are saying. If she doesn't, then you're not doing your job properly. Now it's interesting your analogy to children as well.

SPEAKER_00: 12:04

I love that actually because my architect boss who I worked a long time with him, he used to say, and I can't do his Scottish accent. But yes, if you're writing, you write a letter as if you're writing to your granny. So there

SPEAKER_01: 12:17

you go. Why do you think it's important to bring children and young people to participate in the built environment?

SPEAKER_00: 12:24

I think there are lots of reasons. I'm particularly passionate about diversity in the world of architecture. That's one of the reasons I do what I do. And when I set up Urban Learners was to create art, architecture, design, learning programs for school children on behalf of other organisations because that way I feel I can reach more young people from diverse backgrounds. It's multi-layered in a way. The creative subjects at state schools have been, they're not eradicated totally but they are in decline and they have been over the last 10-12 years without trying to get political about this. Going in and creating programmes for the organisations I've worked with, Sculpture in the City, the Camden Highline and the Grinshaw Foundation has allowed us to show how important those creative subjects are for certain career pathways and we are not going to get a diverse pipeline of designers in the world of architecture unless creativity is taken seriously at school. That I suppose for me is my main reason I do what I do and actually this sort of shouting out to the industry that there is an issue about creativity in state schools has become almost more important to me now or equally as important to me as trying to diversify the profession as much as possible because I truly believe it can go hand in hand. We will not get a diverse pipeline of designers going into the built environment professions unless they're learning creative subjects at school and understanding how all the subjects they learn at school connect together as well in a real world project.

SPEAKER_01: 14:02

There's two things I wanted to ask. One is about creativity. How do you define creativity? And I know it's a tough question. And the other one is in terms of the curriculum, do you align your work with the curriculum or do you try to push the curriculum away to bring in something new?

SPEAKER_00: 14:18

Can I answer the second question first? Of course. I try and do a little of both. Firstly, you have to get the schools to sign up to the programme. One way of doing that is showing how the creative learning programmes we are designing and delivering are aligned to curriculum. I mean, not just to art, design and technology, which obviously they do, but we pull in geography, science, math, history, whatever the the project's about really I mean every project we work on is different that's one thing and I often map activities or the design process alongside the curriculum subjects I'm sure I'm not the only person who does that but then yeah we definitely try and remove some of that curriculum or make it enjoyable because as soon as you mention maths so many children switch off or suddenly become actively worried that they're not going to be able to do what you're going to ask them to do it's about enlightening the curriculum I think and then there's this word that schools band around and I get really annoyed with a lot of the words that schools use I mean it's not their fault for enrichment there is enrichment for students to do things after school or school trips or a selective few are chosen to do an enrichment activity after school actually the curriculum should be enriched everybody should have an enriched curriculum I suppose that's what we try and do and of course it's only for a selection of students because we can't work with a whole year group of 200 children in secondary schools but I think what we try and do as much as possible show how a curriculum can be enriched as well because yes we're engaging with young people and children but equally important to the teachers that we work with and I have a lot of the teachers we work with I now consider really good friends I mean they are so important in that equation of creating a more enriched curriculum and I know that some of the teachers we've worked on Sculpting the City, Camden Highline and the Grimshaw Foundation they are all using some of our activities some of our methodologies with other students in the school whether it's the same year group a different year group and they're connecting what we're doing with how they can develop their own scheme of work therefore we're reaching out to a wider number of young people as well your question about working with or removing curriculum it's a little bit of both and then what does creativity mean to me I mean how long have we got interestingly at the Grimshaw Foundation launch last year which is a fantastic event at the Royal Academy we were all were all asked to write on a hexagon shape from one of the toolkits that we worked with in last year's programme. We were all asked to write what creativity means to us. I just wrote everything. I asked somebody else I know, quite coincidentally, and you're going to get a different answer to everybody you ask that question to. A little bit like asking people, what is architecture? You're going to get a different answer. It really does mean everything to me. I would not survive the day without creativity, I don't think. But in terms of it's important to everyone creativity help you back to schools you know having a more creative curriculum a more connected curriculum it is really helpful for critical thinking and responding quickly making decisions I think there's so many skills attributed to the creative subjects that children do at schools that are life skills and really important whether you become a creative or you don't they are so enriching in skills that we need for everyday life they provide confidence. They can help you perform. They can help as in an everyday meeting. Life is a performance. And I think both the creative subjects at school should be there for everybody and not

SPEAKER_01: 17:52

the few. What I think in terms of the curriculum is that it needs a massive change because rock learning, we know it doesn't really work. And we should reduce more project-based learning, which is a lot of the workshops we do are based around that. And I think because there's Google, there's AI, you don't need the teacher to tell you about history. Learn it yourself. What you need is learn skills, studying critical thinking, problem solving. That's really where I think the curriculum should be going.

SPEAKER_00: 18:22

I think you're right. But I also think we need to inspire young people to want to go and look up history, geography, architecture, whatever it might be. And I think that's where there needs to be a huge overhaul, reform of the national curriculum in this country, England. I think Wales are more progressive than Scotland. Scotland possibly I know more about Wales I think England was sort of we've gone backwards in the last 12 years which is really sad but I do work with some Camden schools and Camden's an interesting borough they've always been interesting from an educational point of view they've always been very can't think of the right word but yeah not perhaps in the way that Wales has been put rest of their curriculum but what they have done in the last five years probably longer I don't know all the ins and outs but they are most definitely spearheading a STEAM curriculum i.e. STEM with the A the A being arts and I have worked with STEAM hub schools in Camden and they I'm not sure it's working with all the schools it's obviously easier in primary schools where you can do project based learning more easily but some of the secondary schools are definitely connecting their curriculums more and I do a lot of work with Regent High School which is in Somers Town in Camden which is one of the most deprived areas in the country and they have done I mean it's just amazing what that school is doing with their students and actually the thing I'm proudest of I've worked with them since 2019 on both Camden Highline and the Grimshaw Foundation and the teacher which is now actually an assistant head she recently told us at a meeting that since 2019 and bearing in mind there's been a pandemic in the middle of this since 2019 there has been a 194 percentage increase in the uptake of their students choosing art and design or design and technology at GCSE that's nearly double I mean that's for all intents and purposes double the number which is phenomenal and she's trying to credit me I think she's equally I mean probably more so to credit than me but just to be a tiny part of that transformation of a school is phenomenal but that school is a steam hub school and is just singing on as many of these extracurricular activities within curriculum time which is absolutely phenomenal that's fantastic and even better is they're about to start an A-level in design and technology in September this year. That's pretty staggering as well because there aren't many schools or offerings DT slash product design at A-level.

SPEAKER_01: 20:54

We're already talking a little bit about this, but what are the hardest bits within this landscape that needs to change?

SPEAKER_00: 21:00

The hardest thing is, if we go right to the top, is government and Department for Education recognising the importance of creative subjects and giving them the validity that they deserve. that's the hardest point because we were getting somewhere I feel 2010 and I don't know how we do it I mean change of government I think that's the hardest thing I mean because majority of schools have become so robotic in the sense that they're churning out results churning out results for league tables in order for them to get the money for the next year which means they have to get as many students passing the core subjects in maths English and sciences and and a humanity subject and potentially a language and that's one of the reasons why the creative subjects are dropping down. There are very few state schools I know of where students can choose two creative subjects to take at GCSE. I think I know two in Camden. Some schools are asking their students to choose their GCSE subjects in year 8 when they're 12, 13 years old. Most schools it's in year 9 so they're 13, 14 years old. You can't decide what subject you want to do at 12, 13. I don't thing. I didn't know what I wanted to be when I was that age. That's an issue I think. That's a landscape

SPEAKER_01: 22:16

that needs to be changed. Such an oversight from the government because the creative industries bring so much revenue to our economy. We could talk about urban learners.

SPEAKER_00: 22:25

I think I've talked about our aims in terms of diversifying the built environment professions and in particular architecture or the world of architecture and obviously we've just talked a lot about schools and curriculum and I'm really passionate about what urban learners are really passionate about trying to embed creativity in schools. I think essentially the main thing Urban Learners does is create both art and architecture and design learning outreach programs on behalf of our clients for schools and we're generally working with the last two years of primary school and the first three years of secondary school. Generally the first three years of secondary school where it's absolutely critical that students understand that if they enjoy creative subjects that are creative pathways for them out there. We're trying to help students make those critical decisions in terms of what subjects to study at GCSE. I think that's at the core of what we do. All those programs Urban Learner create. And as I've said, we're very lucky we have repeat clients, which I think says quite a lot. We've been working for Sculpture in the City since 2018. And then during the pandemic, we created an online series of activities for them. I mean, I find the program incredibly inspiring because it's a little different from all the other programs we do where it's very much a about art and architecture in the city together and I think I said that the space between art and architecture is what inspires me I do find exploring those spaces and the sculptures with the students incredibly I mean it's fun it's playful and I think they're inspired to sort of discover creativity more on their own having taken part in the programme and also have a bit of an understanding in how what roles they can play in the future within the city that's not the key aim of the programme key aim is to elevate art in schools, really. Camden High Line was a fantastic programme to work on. It was all pre-pandemic and before the design team for the Camden High Line was even commissioned and it was about making noises and getting local children in Camden sort of inspired by reimagining the High Line. If nobody knows what the Camden High Line is, it's a stretch of disused railway between Camden and King's Crop that is essentially going to become an elevated parkway in the city, a little along the lines of the New York High Line. But that very much was a project we mapped, a simplified design process over the curriculum and had fantastic results. Also working for the Grimshaw Foundation, I should give a massive shout out to because for an architect practice and the Grimshaw family to come together to want to inspire future generations and concentrate on the younger children is fantastic. And we've been leading their learning programs two years and there's more to come there, which is fantastic. We also sort of want to connect architects with schools as much as we can and we're beginning to be asked more and more to do that. We call that Urban Learners Assemble. And that may be anything from helping architects connect with schools for work experience students. It could be for their EDI. It could even be working with a school in an area where they are developing, designing for a developer. I think we do quite a lot. We're hoping to do more and more of that. And then we also have a stream, Urban Learners Charate, which is we have created and delivered a community event and sort of celebrated events and we are in line to be working a little more on that as well. We're keeping in touch with our social media and you'll find out more on that one. Chirate being quite a big word there. I can't give too much away right now. I think like all architects we're pretty flexible and adaptable and I think that's one of the reasons I really enjoy creating programs for others is because I continue to work with architects as well as working with the young people. For me that's really important and sort of resolving a breach is fantastic as well. Designing an educational program or a learning program around a brief set by a client is it's a great thing to do what is the main challenge

SPEAKER_01: 26:18

at the moment

SPEAKER_00: 26:19

so there are a lot of people doing similar things to us now which is absolutely brilliant the landscape of architectural educational practitioners for younger people outside of university shall we say has radically changed in the last five six years i feel weren't very many players in the game before 2018 i don't think and it's or if there were oh, we didn't really know about them. Now I feel there are many, many people doing great things of whom you're interviewing lots of them. I feel that we need to be recognised more for what we do within the profession. You need it for the profession. I mean, obviously my clients are all great and recognise our learners and what we do as being very valuable. I think the industry needs to recognise the issue of creativity in schools and help make noises. I think the industry needs to recognise that a lot of what us learning and community-based practitioners do is valuable for the design process as well so I think that's a challenge and to be recognised as important you know to be paid for what we do as well I mean obviously we're paid but perhaps you know if we're recognised more as an important part of the whole design process then we will get paid for what we actually do which is very time consuming creating activity it's fun it's very time consuming coming up with great activities for young people

SPEAKER_01: 27:37

I think funding is a big problem in what we're doing and as you said recognition recognition Victoria Thornton from Thornton Education Trust that is collaborating this podcast has done a lot for the work you're doing as well as RIBA school program with Fiona McDonald they did quite a lot as well

SPEAKER_00: 27:53

definitely well Victoria's been having the conversation 25-30 years

SPEAKER_01: 27:58

the school program at RIBA was with all the work Victoria's done

SPEAKER_00: 28:01

absolutely because Fiona like myself ran the education team at Open City I keep seeing names pop up all over the place and we all came from one place and that's Open City or Open House London as it were. We all have a lot to thank Victoria for I think.

SPEAKER_01: 28:17

Absolutely. Is there a question I should have asked you that I haven't asked you? What was that question?

SPEAKER_00: 28:22

Did you ask me what inspires me? Well I think what inspires us as practitioners is important because unless we're inspired we can't inspire the young people and children that we work with and engage with and are trying to inspire to understand more about their built environment and creativity not that we want more to become architects or engineers at all, but it's just to have a greater awareness and an understanding of how important creativity is. Many things inspire me, but I think right at the beginning I said I wanted to study art, but not architecture. But I think that space between art and architecture really does inspire me. And the more I think about it, the more abstract it becomes. Put very simplistically, the public art in sculpture in the city of London, I consider the space between art and architecture as a sort of physical space but I think it's also art design and technology becomes a space in schools for architecture and I think you know there's a multitude of basis between art and architecture I love jewellery and I know a lot of architects love jewellery and love making because you suddenly have something at the end of the day and not in five years time I think that space between art and architecture is what really excites me and motivates me and hopefully that's I get across to the people I work with.

SPEAKER_01: 29:43

You're wearing a beautiful necklace. Thank you too. Thanks. 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, antoniocoplant-portfolio.co.uk, buildingcenter.co.uk, www.thorntoneducationtrust.org www.cardiff.ac.uk University.