Through the E20 viewfinders

What is there to do in the Olympic Park? Well if you’re 12 years old, you might be interested in the recent discovery of dinosaurs and mermaids.

The 12 year old cartographers at Chobham Academy are not simply mapping the park, but reinterpreting it too. Suggestions for future activities for young people include the grounded - rolling down hills (of course!) and climbing up new climbing walls positioned on the sides of the E20 blocks - to the over-excited - navigating kayaks with game consoles, tracking herds of roaming dinosaurs and even swimming with mermaids in the River Lea. 

 

All slightly fantastical perhaps, but they clearly demonstrate how the 12 year olds have grasped that E20 is an ever-changing part of London: Its emerging character will be as much defined by the people who use it, as by its designers.
 

Modular viewfinders, designed by the architects and wayfinders at Mobile Studio, have acted as lenses through which the students can project their ideas for the future. 

The views captured when the group built the viewfinders in the park will ultimately link to an online guide. The aim is to excite other young people about the Olympic Park’s potential to become many important things to many people, and to encourage them to see it is as their new back yard.

 

Why can’t we have all our lessons out here in the park

“Why can’t we have all our lessons out here in the park?”

This is what Year 8 at collectively shouted as we headed back to school after our latest East 20 workshop. A year ago, these young people were pioneering students, the first year group to enter Chobham Academy, the first school to open in the Olympic Park.   

If the aim of the project is to excite the students about the opportunities in their school’s ‘back yard’, then I think we might have already achieved it.
 

Our challenge is to support the students in a search to find ‘places’ that are meaningful to them in this huge 560 acre newly formed site.  Four teams: #FishNet, The Great Banter, Anonymous and Banterlona, went where curiosity led them, heading for high points and searching out secret spots.

These are just a few of the lesser-known facts and places they uncovered on the Olympic Park:
  

• The landscaped slopes are perfect for rolling down 

• Tumbling bay playground appeals to people of all ages; there is no upper age limit

• The rustling leaves of the surrounding trees in fact make Portland Lake the noisiest place in the park

• You can literally lose yourself in a corner of Victory park… you’ll have to go to find out how.

Start points had previously been provided by a panel of speakers intimately involved in the design and maintenance of the park and its surrounding neighbourhoods. This inspiring panel included Kathyrn Firth, Chief of Design at the LLDC, Caroline Jupp, artist in residence currently based in a moving shed, and Nick Edwards of Fundamental. Even an imaginary alien who has just taken up residence in the park also made an appearance!

The places the students came across will become sites for large-scale viewfinders to be built in the next session. Quite literally watch this space…

This is East 20!

Two years on from the Olympics, the Queen Elizabeth Park is being handed back to its local community, and, excitingly, to fifty local teenage cartographers.

The twelve year olds are all Year 8 students at Chobham Academy, the new school within the Athletes Village – now East 20 Village.

 

Together with The Building Exploratory, LivingMaps and LLDC, they are creating a map to share what the Olympic Park has to offer other young people, and their hopes for its future.

In this first workshop of six for this term, Phil Cohen of Living Maps broadened everyone’s horizons to the incredible scope of mapping. In return the teenagers opened our eyes to a young person’s perspective of living in this corner of London: They drew fifty maps of the local area drawn from memory. No easy feat, but what they produced is fascinatingly insightful.

A taster of the memory maps: Friends, food and fashion feature highly!

Taking in a high rise panorama of the Olympic Park from the roof of the school.

Art Workshop with Into University

Today we are visiting Into University, Lambeth to work with a group of their students. The work we do will inform an artwork that Linda Florence is going to produce, to act as a 'marker' for Durning Library in Kennington.

We look forward to working with the students, and seeing what beautiful commemorative tiles they create as part of the workshop today!

Our thanks to Into University for partnering with us on this project.

To find out more about our work on Durning Library, visit this earlier blog post.

Quality Badge Awarded

We are delighted that we have once again been awarded a Quality Badge by the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom (lOtC).

The badge is a nationally recognised indicator of good quality educational provision, helping  reduce the red tape associated with learning outside the classroom and thereby making it easier for teachers and other education providers to incorporate learning outside of the classroom into the everyday curriculum.

For more information on The lOtC and the Quality Badge, please click here. 

Mint Street Celebration Day

Thank you to everyone who came to see us on Saturday at the Celebration of Mint Street Adventure Playground. The day was a great success and it was wonderful to see everyone taking part in the fantastic activities and making time to add comments and thoughts to the building consultation.

  

Learning some tips on balance and movement from the Parkour experts  

 

The guys from Parkour Generations had this to say about their experience working at Mint Street on Saturday:

"Mint Street is a great place for local young people to get into sports and physical activities, and we are always happy to support excellent charitable community organisations like this one. Children should always be encouraged to move, explore, play and learn about their potential, and spaces like Mint Street enable this for so many young people living in urban environments.

Thanks to everyone who helped make today such great fun, and we look forward to seeing everyone continuing to work on their movement ;)"

 

 Your comments on what we have heard from building users so far

 

Creating models with artist Karen Logan

Celebration Day and Consultation at Mint Sreet Adventure Playground - 11th May

Free Film Making Workshop - Saturday 9th February

Getting involved at the Building Exploratory

Over the last couple of weeks we have held three really busy and very successful open evenings for people who want to get involved in our work.

At the end of March we welcomed 12 potential new volunteers into our office for tea and biscuits and to learn about what we do and the experience they can gain from helping us to develop our learning programmes.

Last Monday 15 artist attended an open evening, which we organised to increase our pool of freelance artists who would like to work with us on up-coming creative projects. The artists' practise ranged from painting, illustration and printing to sculpting, ceramics and installations. The artists' were also all very keen to take up our offer of professional development, which will enable the to gain experience and skills to engage with a variety of audiences they may not have worked with before.

On Thursday evening 8 young people from our local area, along with some of their parents, visited us to help us with our plans to develop an Arts Award accredited programme about local sporting architecture. The group, aged 13-15 were all excited about the project, during which they will have the opportunity to visit a range of historic and contemporary sports venues, including swimming baths, boxing clubs, football stadiums, and of course, some of the magnificent buildings on the Olympic site. We hope to begin this programme in September.

We have been really overwhelmed by the all this enthusiasm for our work and can't wait to work with all these fantastic people!

Arts Award Welcome

The Building Exploratory has just become Arts Award Welcome, which means we can support young people working towards their Arts Awards by offering relevant opportunities.

If you are interested in working with us to achieve an award please visit the 'Young People' page of our website or contact us to find out more.

Arts Award is a qualification that rewards young people with a widely recognised certificate at three levels (bronze, silver and gold), accredited by Trinity College London. For more information please visit the Arts Award website. 

Shoreditch Youth Forum visits TBE

On Sunday 9th February Shoreditch Youth Forum visited the Building Exploratory to carry out some research and make a film for their 'Heroes' project. Our Head of Education Janet used the exhibition pieces to explain to the young people how Hackney's built environment has developed from prehistoric times and why it looks like it does today.

Janet said 'We had some stimulating discussion - the youth forum were very well informed!'. The young people also shared their fascinating Hackney-based family histories and used some of the Building Exploratory maps and photos to carry out further research.

The groups resulting work will be on show to the public at The Bridge Academy on 27th January, 4:30-7:30pm.