Architecture for kids podcast with Dr Bonnie Kwok Principal Urban Designer/ Youth Engagement Lead at Greater Cambridge Shared Planning

I am passionate about engaging children in the urban design and town planning process, and this 'Architecture for Kids' podcast just provides the perfect platform for an open conversation. I find it both thought provoking and inspiring! Thank you Antonio for your colossal effort in putting together this wonderful learning resource for us!

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 Dr. Bonnie Kwok. Bonnie is the Youth Engagement Lead for the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning, a shared planning service for South Cambridgeshire District Council and Cambridge City Council. Bonnie oversees the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Youth Engagement Service, which provides bespoke youth engagement workshops to enable children and young people to have a genuine input into the urban design, town planning and art process, to learn about development proposals in their local areas, to develop skills in architecture, urban design and town planning, to learn about the built environment profession and to build their capacity and confidence in taking part in community consultations. She also leads on the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning work experience programs, giving young people the opportunity to gain practical work experience, skills and knowledge in architecture, urban design, town planning and landscape design. Bonnie has over 20 years of experience in youth engagement, architecture, urban design and town planning in private and public sectors. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an associate member of the Royal Town Planning Institute. Bonnie is passionate about the subject of youth engagement and this has resulted in the development of a youth engagement framework as part of her PhD learning outcome. This framework was well received by service users and is used to inform Greater Cambridge shared planning youth engagement work. She continues to conduct research where youth engagement work and the research data collected is used to inform best practice and urban design and plan making process. In her spare time, Bonnie volunteers at Acne Chinese Community School where she works as the head teacher and designs curriculum for engaging children and parents from all backgrounds in the learning of Chinese language and culture. Over the past 20 years, she has been actively engaging her students in many urban regeneration projects in the Acne, utilizing a professional skills and knowledge. Bonnie's contribution towards young people's education, personal development and well-being received significant recognition. In 2022, she was awarded the prestigious Individual of the Year Award in Youth Engagement by the Thornton Education Trust. A greater Cambridge shared planning youth engagement teams, Let's Dance, Public Art Project at the Cambridge Science Park, were also shortlisted by the Thornton Education Trust for the 2022 School Collaborations and Social Value Awards. She is the winner of the 2021 Blossom Award Education Category organised by Alan Mack MP in recognition of her contribution towards children's wellbeing and education through her voluntary and professional work. In 2023, she was invited to attend the Prime Minister Rishi Sonak's Lunar New Year reception in recognition of her commitment to youth engagement work. Bonnie, thank you for coming to talk to me today and I'm looking forward to our conversation.

SPEAKER_00: 3:38

Hello.

SPEAKER_01: 3:38

What subjects were you good at school and what subjects did you enjoy most?

SPEAKER_00: 3:43

That's an interesting question. The subjects that I enjoy most when I was in school were art and English. Piggy as well actually.

SPEAKER_01: 3:51

Did they help you in your career choices?

SPEAKER_00: 3:54

Well I think to a large extent the arts subject has certainly inspired me to observe the environment more, to look at nature, to look at buildings and to appreciate the form, the colour, the texture. I would say yes, the arts subject to a large extent has helped inform my career choices.

SPEAKER_01: 4:11

And let's talk a little bit about I come from a Hong

SPEAKER_00: 4:20

Kong background. With that in mind, the traditional thinking is that it will be good to pursue university subjects that are more of a traditional nature. That links to the word professional. I would say something like accountancy or medicine or business, that kind of traditionally seen as a secure and highly respected profession. Now, because I was interested in art, I wanted to study art, and my parents were not very happy about that. They said, maybe it's better you study something that's related to art, but is more seen in their view, more professional. That's how I chose architecture, because that combines art, science, and is more, in their eyes, more professional. And so I studied architecture in university, at Oxford Brookes University, and there was a chance to study urban design as one of the modules. I got really interested in urban design. When I finished university, I worked for some architectural practices at Mount Oxfordshire. Parallel to this, I was studying a diploma and a master in urban design because I always knew that that sort of design element, because studying urban design is quite different. Urban design is quite different from architecture. In that architecture, we were focusing on one building or few buildings, whereas urban design is looking at the wider context as well. So I was interested in that. Once when I finished my urban design master's, I decided a career change. I decided I decided to shift from architecture to urban design. I was fortunate enough to find a position with Bournemouth Borough Council to work as an urban designer and the rest is history. And whilst working as an urban designer in Greater Cambridge, there was an opportunity that with the support of my team leader, John Cock, I felt there's a need to use that opportunity, me working as an urban designer and a town planner to outreach to schools. I was just finishing my PhD in urban design, focusing on the subject of youth engagement with my team leader, John Cock. the support. I went to the school, spoke to the children about development proposals. Initially, it's a pilot project. It grew because it proved to be really successful and helpful to get children's ideas on board, something that the developers were doing. But I just felt that we were doing it better, maybe because I was actively using my youth engagement framework. And now it's becoming a really, really well-received youth engagement program for the council.

SPEAKER_01: 6:36

How did you start working with children and young people? What made you think including them in your work?

SPEAKER_00: 6:41

I think that started It started when I became more concerned about children's voices not being heard. In my spare time, I volunteered in Hackney Chinese Community School, what used to be a deprived area in Hackney, in Hagerston. And that was 20 years ago when I first started my voluntary work. And there were a lot of urban regeneration projects happening at the time. The children were aware that there was some kind of regeneration happening, particularly in the council estate where my school is. But then they didn't know how to have a say. how to express their views on the design of the buildings, on the design of the spaces. So I thought that's going to have a big impact on them because they're going to be living in this place for the next 10 years or so or more. I thought it's really important that I do something about it. And then that's how I became interested in the subject of children, young people and urban design. And I think to a large extent, that informed my desire to pursue my PhD, focusing on that subject.

SPEAKER_01: 7:37

Your PhD, you designed a framework, you used to develop your projects or planning. Can you talk a bit about this? When

SPEAKER_00: 7:43

I was doing my PhD, one of the biggest challenges was to find children, actually, to work with, to help inform the case studies. I was quite fortunate because I was heading Hackney Chinese School. As a tech teacher, I have quite a large degree of autonomy to design the program, how to engage the children. But, of course, to ensure a good level of representativeness, I needed more case studies. Through the help of my professor, Georgia Bettina Watson, I got in touch with the Big Arts Week, which was an initiative to ensure children and built environment professionals could have a constructive dialogue to look at design of buildings and environments. Through them I got in touch with different schools. I would work with children from different primary schools in Oxford to understand their thoughts and their views and through working with children in London and also in Oxford and through literature research combining my practical professional experience because the PhD took so long. I was a student and then I was working in the councils through theory, learning about theory literature study, literature review, attending conferences, working with children. Both in my voluntary work and in my day job, I put all my experience together and then develop a framework. The framework is a simple framework that aims to help developer or anyone who's interested in speaking to children to consider the key things for effective engagement. There are four areas. The four areas are impact on the plan and decision-making process. The next criteria is about the process and educational value and practical factors. So these are the four key criterias that I think we need to consider when speaking to children and young people. I try to keep it simple, but it's based on a lot of research because the last thing you want to do is to put people off when it comes to speaking to children and young people. You don't want people to see that as a cumbersome process. So the framework is divided into 11 criteria and really wants people to think carefully what's the best way, the most effective and efficient way to engage children and young people. In terms of

SPEAKER_01: 9:37

the work in Cambridge, the town planning, was it easy to persuade people about the importance of bringing in children and young people or was it art itself?

SPEAKER_00: 9:47

That's a really interesting question. I think a bit of both really in terms of getting buy-in. I think having the credentials, the qualifications to run the youth engagement activities is a plus. I would say in the last few years we've been doing this pilot project for a few years now. We've conducted about 13 youth engagement workshops with 13 developers benefiting over 720 children and basically this job just shows that on the whole developers are quite supportive of the process. Occasionally you get one or two developers who saw that as a potential barrier to the planning process because for most people they see time as money and youth engagement takes time and they might see that as a hindrance or a delay to the process. There is that element I think we still need to look at. Youth engagement is not easy but luckily on the whole I'm quite fortunate that I'm working with professionals and most developers who invest in came bridge are quite large companies so they have that understanding about the need to engage young people and most companies would have CSR corporate social responsibility programs it is their interest to ensure that they do have a social impact and from the council point of view is about social value is about being a caring council I would say on the whole I'm quite fortunate in having good developers on board but also the council itself have very good counsellors that are really supportive of the idea of youth engagement one counsellor that I really admire is Dr Jimmy Hawkins who's been supporting the youth engagement programs for many years now she's always there to speak to the children to support us from moving furniture to preparing the snacks to preparing the plans to helping me judge the children's design because it's always done by some kind of competition she's always there and that gives me so much confidence that I'm doing the right thing and then my team members been great support as well we have a small team of staff in the youth engagement service and we work together very well as a team what is the

SPEAKER_01: 11:39

impact for children and young people to take part of the discussion in the built environment? What's the impact on the built environment?

SPEAKER_00: 11:46

That's a really good question because when I was doing my PhD, I found that there were a lot of very keen youth engagement practitioners who did a lot of work, but somehow the outcome of the work are not often translated into a product or an actual outcome. And sometimes it ended up like an academic exercise, which obviously has its value because then you learn about the process. But what I'm interested in is to ensure that the outcome is there, is tangible. In the youth engagement workshop, that i run they are normally results related and outcome driven in terms of impact in the all the workshops that we run as a team have resulted in children's ideas being translated into an actual product and that's secured normally via a planning condition or section 106 planning agreement which ties the developer to providing it to what end of the planning process subject to planning approval of course so one good example would be the melbourne science park project where we asked the Melbourne primary school children, year five children, to design street furniture for the development proposal, which is a science park, but they're looking to open a big area of the lawn. So we want the children to celebrate that space because Melbourne Science Park is quite a large area and of the village. So that science park itself is part of the heart of the community. So to have that open space designed by the children is really important. So the children's design, which were very, very innovative, for example, one is a sausage bag with a barking sound and that's one of the winning entries which are now being built by the developer and will be delivered on site in the summer. That is a tangible outcome and we're going to have an unveiling ceremony with all the children gathering around the furniture they see and that's a legacy, that's testament to their creativity, to our work and to the good collaboration partnership with all key stakeholders. How do you manage

SPEAKER_01: 13:34

the expectations between you, the designer or the expert and the children, the expert of their area That's

SPEAKER_00: 13:42

a really good question because when we run youth engagement workshops, we have a drawing session. So we ask children to draw what they desire for a particular proposal, whether it's through the building design or the public space offer. And you will quite often get big swimming pools, big skate parks, even a theme park, amongst many other things such as nice planting and benches and so on. Managing expectation is important. I think for my team, we always emphasise to children that everything they said means something to us We might not be able to deliver everything that you want, but we understand where you're coming from and where your interest lies. When it comes to youth provision, we will try to provide something that hopefully will match your expectations. And this is why when we ask the children to design something, we will always have two categories. One is if you can have everything in the world, what would that be? But it's also another list, which is something that's deliverable, that at least we can gauge what they decide to have that could hopefully be used to inform the bigger local plan process when we come to planning bigger things with the local plan. That could be provided at a neighbourhood level. But for the smaller projects, which if we do is based on planning application base, they would be more manageable ones. But I think the important thing is at the end of the day, they can all see the results. And that's within reach because normally that's delivered within the lifetime of a planning application, which is normally in a few years.

SPEAKER_01: 15:06

You have 30 years of experience working with children and young people. And how has the landscape changed? That's a really

SPEAKER_00: 15:19

good question. In my experience, I think the landscape has certainly changed in the last 20 years from when I first started. When I first started, it was more about, from a very simplistic point of view, children get involved, children, they come along, or we have the opportunity to reach to the school because just having the access to children was a challenge. But over the years, I think more and more schools and also key stakeholders They appreciate the benefits of speaking to children. It's getting a lot easier now to have access to children and young people nowadays. I think the first change in my practice is about access to children and young people. The second change, I think, is to do with there's a shift towards looking at children's mental health and well-being. When I first started, it was more about providing a safe environment for children to play in, particularly in the area that I was doing research in. It was in some deprived areas of London. It was to do with the gang culture. So it's about having a safe space for them. And it's about having the principles of urban design embedded in the design, which from the children's point of view, that's of correlate with what I learned, which is eyes on the streets, which is about having planting and different levels of planting to ensure they meet the different needs of the children. You have some sensory base, you have the space for older children and younger children, so they can have their own space that are fit for the age group. But nowadays, it's about mental health, because I think COVID has certainly played a key role in terms of of making sure that children can use the space that is stimulating, that is safe, but also can help improve their mental health and well-being. Sports equipment, for example, outdoor gym is something that is popular now. But you also have the other extreme, which was children were quite used to playing computer games and spending a lot of time surfing the internet. I think it's about trying to encourage them to come out more post-COVID to have the confidence to play out again and to appreciate the nature.

SPEAKER_01: 17:08

Out easy or out and out difficult can be to keep children and young people interested in this project. What is your experience?

SPEAKER_00: 17:17

I think to have a name for the project is very important as with any project that you do. When we go to the school and speak to the children we'll always explain to them what is the outcome that we expect. When children are aware that it will lead to an outcome and the outcome would mean some kind of tangible results such as public art or street furniture or piece of play park that has their design input then they're more inclined to take part and also I find the use of computer technology can help engage because after all they're very conversant computer games or mobile phones or laptops or iPad things like that. We use a software called Carwood Quiz which is quite easy to use and I often use that to engage children to encourage them to learn about urban design, town planning, architecture and the basic principles of what good urban design is and also to learn about the details of a particular site. They get to learn more about the value of urban design but also the importance of engagement, why they need to engage is to give them the confidence to express their views that when they grow up they will become responsible citizens of our society. Good use of modern technology helps to ensure that the project has a tangible outcome helps but also above all is to make sure that it's educational value because after all we're taking up the school time. Always make sure that all the activities we do tie in with the national curriculum subjects.

SPEAKER_01: 18:44

How does these programs that you set up and even your framework ties in with the national curriculum and do you think that the national curriculum could be more open to this type of work that we're doing with children and young people?

SPEAKER_00: 18:57

I think that's really really useful question actually because the framework that I developed actually has a very strong link with the national curriculum subject and of the four criteria that I mentioned earlier is to do with educational value and outcome. Basically we We make sure that it ties in with the design and technology subjects, the citizenship subjects, which school often quite cannot sort of invest too much time to deal with. We tend to cover that, amongst many other things such as geography and art and so on. And it's often quite fun. We want to make sure that children are given adequate opportunities to speak as well, to express their views. So most of the children that we work with these days, they're quite confident in speaking, in speaking up. But it's about them using the right language to communicate their ideas So that when there's a new development proposal or there's a regeneration project, they would actively go to those events and sort of express their views. And hopefully they could also talk about what's good urban design. How

SPEAKER_01: 19:53

open are the schools to these type of programs? And do you think the parents and carers and guardians are supporting the children and young people to engage in this work?

SPEAKER_00: 20:02

On the whole, I think all the schools that we approach in Greater Cambridge were very supportive of us going there because I think I think this is the thing, coming from a local planning authority, give the schools the confidence that we are there for a real purpose and we're there genuinely want to help children to express their views on development proposals so they can be fed back to the planning process. Now, you asked about parents, guardians and grandparents' views. Every time after we've done the youth engagement workshop, we'll do a survey form. So we'll interview the students slash the children, young people, the teachers and also the parents, guardians and who were always involved. to attend a youth engagement workshop as well. They often gave us very good feedback to say that they appreciated officers going to the school to speak to the children because they learned something new. They would not normally learn about architecture, town planning, urban design at such a young age. But we sort of made that accessible and easy to understand for them. The parents also said, when there's a development proposal, they tend not to go to the village hall or the town hall to look at those posters because there's just too many words. They felt it was more like a token, tick box experience Whereas by coming to the school and look at the children, doing site visits, listening to offices about the views, getting the hands dirty during drawings, they actually feel more, the parents, the adults, they felt more engaged and then they themselves want to have a view as well on development also. One example would be recently we have a research and development office project in a village called Foxton in Cambridge. And the site was the Burlington Press, which was an old printing factory, but developers want to turn it into a research and development office project and because the setting was quite unique that there it is surrounded by soft listed buildings and heritage assets there were some questions by the local community as to whether this the contemporary design was appropriate and through speaking the children to the parents the schools they got a very good idea of why there was that need for the development which was to support the Cambridge research business but also to generate jobs and help improve the public realm and children also get to design the public space and the furniture for this the development. And in the end, there were very few objections to the proposals and it was approved under delegated powers. So this is a very good example showing how youth engagement involving parents, teachers and guardians and grandparents can do the intergenerational common understanding beneficial for the planning process.

SPEAKER_01: 22:28

I think that's really the key is the intergenerational approach. It's not just the kids or it's not just the adults and so on, but you know, all ages and all groups coming together. What is the road ahead, if I can ask you that question? I

SPEAKER_00: 22:40

think that's a really good question. What is the role ahead? What are our roles as youth practitioners? Our role as youth engagement practitioners, I think, is to make sure that in the future, youth engagement is not seen as a need, but it is a necessity. It is a must. Schools would be teaching the subject, hopefully without us needing to outreach so much. All the built environment professionals or the natural environment professionals will automatically go and consult the children and young people when they develop a new proposal because it will have a big impact on the children who are the longest users of these spaces. My hope is for everyone to have an understanding that it is everyone's responsibility to engage young people and it is just like when we consult the public it's not just about focusing on the adults but children is an important group of our society and they should be adequately represented.

SPEAKER_01: 23:36

Is there a question I should have asked you that I haven't asked you and what was that question?

SPEAKER_00: 23:40

That's a really good question. I think it's about policy, because at the moment, there is no concrete policy in national planning policy framework to require specifically that children and young people should be consulted in the planning process. It just says community engagement is important. But whose role it is? Because at the moment, as part of the planning process, you have a document called the SCI, Statement of Community Involvement, which the developer produces. And quite often, because of time constraints, resource constraints Community engagement itself is a tick box exercise, let alone youth engagement. So I think if the government can put a policy in place to ensure children and young people are consulted in the planning and design process, that would make our life a lot easier to strengthen the case for outreaching to children because that's a planning requirement. Thank you very much for inviting me.

SPEAKER_01: 24:31

Thank you very much to my guests today, to all the listeners. And please subscribe to Architecture for Kids podcast and leave your and a review. Recommend us to your friends and family. And to find out more about it, visit our websites. And follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, C-A-P-E-L-A-O 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