Merry Christmas

We hope you have a lovely Christmas and we look forward to seeing you in 2011

The Lord Mayor's Show 2010

On Saturday 13th November, pupils from Christchurch Primary School, staff from the City Bridge Trust, the Senior Bee's and the BE team came together to accompany our bridge design float through the streets of the City in the Lord Mayor's Show.

The show was the culmination of months of hard work. Project coordinator Lizzie Edward said "this has been such a great project to work on. The children, the Bee's and all of the team have been fantastic and it's amazing to see it all come together today for the show!"

The project was made possible by the City Bridge Trust, whose grants support community projects in London. The float was designed by Freshwest to reflect the City Bridge Trust's concept of 'linking London communities'. The project itself also had this idea at its heart with intergenerational sessions between the school children and the Bee's playing a key part.

Senior Bee's Building Bridges

With the preparations for the Lord Mayor's Show on Saturday the 13th November in full swing, the Senior Bee's got involved in the fun through a fantastic talk and a bridge building challenge with project leader Lizzie Edwards.

Lizzie gave a wonderful talk on bridges and talked the group through the float design, explaining the process the Christchurch primary students and the designers went through to come up with the end product. The Bee's then took part in the same bridge building challenge that the students tried at the beginning of the project. Much laughter, friendly competition and team work saw the Bees' rise to the challenge and put what they had learnt about bridges into practice.

Now everyone is getting excited about the show and we look forward to some of the Bee's joining the students and our team as we accompany the float through the streets of the city next Saturday.

Kilburn Grange Adventure Playground wins international Children's Making Space Award

We are delighted that Kilburn Grange adventure Playground has won this international award, given every 5 years. We are especially pleased because it is awarded by children - the very people the project was conceived with and for.

More soon on the judging process and hopefully a link to the film the children's jury made about the selection process, which outlines their criteria for a successful project for young people.

For more pictures of Kilburn Grange please see our Exploring adventure Flickr feed on the right of this page

Lord Mayor's Show 2010

Following the success of the show last year, the City Bridge Trust has again asked the Building Exploratory to commission a float for the 2010 Lord Mayor's Show. This years float will be designed by innovative furniture designers Freshwest.

In addition, year 5 and 6 students from Christchurch CE Primary School on Brick Lane recently began a programme of exciting and inspiring learning activities, which will culminate in a specially choreographed dance to accompany the float through the streets of the City of London. Through model making with Freshwest, learning Circus Skills with Circus Space, creating dance moves with Akademi Dance Company and a trip along the river Thames, the children will learn about the history, design and construction of the city's bridges.

The Big Draw and The Story of London @ the Geffrye Museum

On Saturday the 2nd October children of all ages and their families celebrated The Big Draw and The Story of London with a series of workshops at the Geffrye Museum. Families flocked to the artist-led Fantastical Houses workshops, in which participants experimented with unusual drawing techniques to create futuristic eco-homes.

In a separate activity for teenagers, young people created 3D models of environmentally freindly buildings inspired by Hackney's unique built environment.

Open House 2010

On Saturday 18th September the Building Exploratory welcomed over 90 members of the public for Open City's Open House event. Besides exploring our beautiful bespoke space at 8 Orsman Road, created by Voluntary Design and build, visitors had the opportunity to meet the team and learn more about the history of market gardens in the local area through examining historic maps and creating their own cress gardens.

Shoe-box Hackney

In August the building Exploratory has been working with photographers and artists Laura Braun and Jane Maxwell-Hyslop to deliver workshops at summer play-schemes in and around Hackney. 

During the workshops participants created their own Hackney shoe-boxes using photos of local buildings and landmarks and pictures of themselves to collage onto and into shoe-boxes transforming them into buildings with windows and doors to look into.

 

Exploring Adventure: Kilburn Grange Adventure Playground

To help realise the best possible design for Kilburn Grange Park Adventure Playground in Camden, the Building Exploratory has worked with erect architecture to devise an ambitious engagement and learning programme to involve the local community. 

Following the completion of this pioneering project in Kilburn Grange Park, work has begun on developing a learning resource for local play workers. Over the summer the design and engagement processes followed will be reproduced in a digital resource to be hosted on our website. The legacy will present the creative processes that informed the final design of this unique play space and aims to celebrate and promote the engagement of communities in the redevelopment of public spaces. The resource will consist of a series of creative adventures for play workers and teachers to use with young people and a “Manifesto for Adventure”.

Please see the photo stream on the right hand side for pictures of the new playground.

The Senior Building Explorers at Cubitt

With the support of Arts Council England’s Arts and Older People Development Fund, the Senior Bees have been taking part in a project designed to develop their creative skills. The project takes the form of a collaboration between the Building Exploratory and Cubitt, a gallery and studios based at the Angel in Islington. 

Inspired by Cubitt’s approach to encouraging older people to take part in participatory arts we have worked together to develop sessions that nurture the creative skills and confidence of the Senior Bees. The Senior Bees have visited Cubitt and taken part in a session which introduced them to the idea of using creative media such as photography, sketching, poetry and so on, as a way of expressing and capturing thoughts, feelings, perceptions and observations of the world around them.

The project has been designed as a skills exchange, so the next phase will see Cubitt’s older people’s art group, Inside Art, taking part in Senior Bee inspired explorations of the built environment. We plan to go on a walking tour around Finsbury to inspire them to open their eyes to the significant buildings and architecture of the area.

  

If you would like to learn more about the Building Exploratory's work with older people, keep and eye out for our new publication which will be launched in September to celebrate and promote our work with the Senior Bee's.

TBE at the summer festivals

This summer we have been out and about delivering free activities at our local festivals. On the 10th July, we enjoyed the best of the summer sunshine at the De Beuavoir Party in the Park, where we helped party goers make paper trees for a miniature De Beauvoir Square.

At the Shoreditch Festival on the 17th July we spilled out of the Discover Hackney Marquee to help children (and enthusiastic adults) build an impressive trapezium based structure from rolled newspaper.

At both festivals we were delighted to meet lots of enthusiastic families and adults and look forward to seeing them again at future events. If you would like to hear more about forthcoming events or be added to our events mailing list please drop us a line via our website.