1-2 November 2006
Rich Mix, London

Jessica Pykett and Tash Lee, Futurelab

This year’s Futurelab conference, held appropriately at Rich Mix in London, brought together a diverse gathering of teachers, policy makers, academics, designers, architects and IT developers to discuss the need to think imaginatively about the learning spaces of the future. The conference provided an opportunity to challenge our preconceptions of the environments in which we learn; to imagine learning taking place anywhere, in the school, home, work and community; and to reflect on the possibilities for transforming those learning spaces with innovative tools such as computer games and mobile, tangible and embedded technology.

In his welcome address, Lord Puttman of Queensgate spoke of the need for a learning vision to underpin the Building Schools for the Future programme in the UK. He spoke of his international experiences working for UNICEF and the great contrasts in learning spaces that he has encountered in his educational work. He urged us to work together to improve learning capability in the UK, in a context where teachers and pupils alike have become systematically disengaged from schooling. He suggested a need to reconceive learning to be more inclusive of children’s experiences, interests and passions which occur outside of the school environment, and to reconnect learning with communities. He spoke of the centrality of educational goals to any programme which seeks to change the ‘landscape of learning’. These, he said, must take account of the digital world in which young people are now growing up, their status as ‘natives’ in this world, and the way in which they have become, in some respects, the experts. In this context, informal, peer-to-peer and participatory learning are integral to the development of well-informed, skilled and creative citizens. Lord Puttman identified a real need to learn from the successes of the commercial world in capturing the engagement of young people, and pointed to Futurelab’s role in facilitating the development of these ideas in collaboration with diverse partners, and rethinking education from the bottom-up. He concluded that learners and teachers should be regarded as active co-developers of future learning spaces, which should be responsive to educational change.

In the second keynote, architect, planner and educational consultant Bruce Jilk outlined the many projects he has worked on in designing learning environments which ‘open up’ possibilities for learning. He spoke of the need to move beyond dogmatic ‘habits of thought’ which have traditionally informed school design, towards an approach which incorporates creative, unpredictable and various ‘lines of flight’ into the design of new learning environments. Many of his examples of school designs from around the world demonstrated this philosophy of design, including overlapping learning centres replacing traditional classrooms, buildings which could include multiple educational providers, and a school in the Netherlands which drew on the idea of ‘squatters rights’, where the learners determined the use of the space provided. Bruce argued that it is necessary to design for ‘50% useless space’ in which the user is empowered to create its meaning. Such spaces can lead to new social practices and learning experiences.

Following from this, it was apt to hear from the third keynote speaker, Steve Moss, Assistant Education Director for Partnerships for Schools, responsible for the Building Schools for the Future programme here in the UK. Steve spoke of the huge opportunity of this programme and the vast investment that the Government has put in to ensure its success. He spoke of the need in a 21st century learning environment to blend physical and virtual spaces rather than to think of schools as discrete, fixed environments in which learning automatically takes place. Instead, he highlighted the necessity of re-embedding schools in their local communities, and to think in terms of learning happening in many different spaces across towns and cities, catering for personalised learning requirements, but integrated by an important virtual space. Such a learning environment, and the affordances of new technologies raises questions about the appropriateness of current educational practices. Steve warned against seeing technology as a panacea for educational problems, and emphasised the need to reconceptualise pedagogy from an imaginative and questioning position.

Other speakers at the conference tackled these themes, and demonstrated some of the practices, designs and technologies which may help us to reimagine future learning spaces. Dan Medicoff, from The SEA, an organisation which uses design and technology to improve services, presented their ‘OOKL’ project, which uses mobile phones to facilitate a new museum education experience where pupils can become ‘personal curators’, capturing, interpreting and sharing their own museum collections. Ian Pearshouse, from the Learning Sciences Research Institute, University of Nottingham, focused on how mobile technologies are being used to enhance and transform learning in formal and informal spaces. He began his presentation by comparing the ideals of personalised learning (individual, authentic) with the affordances of mobile phones (personalised, portable), highlighting the synergy between the two, and then took us through three developmental phases of mobile telephony and the impact that each phase has had on learning. He finished by offering a vision for the future that included location-based social networks, environments that teach about themselves and wide-area educational gaming.

The Create-A-Scape workshop, facilitated by Constance Fleuriot of Featherhouse Independent Research, gave delegates a chance to try out some of these ideas in imagining a lesson using location-based ‘mediascapes’. Each group was tasked with designing a location-dependent educational experience for a particular age group and subject area, with the imaginative results displayed on Day 2 for all to review.

James Bradburn, from King's College London, spoke about ‘Learning in the Wild’, focusing on the differences between informal and formal learning and how we might draw on the more natural learning that happens in museums, galleries and life generally. With 85% of learning occurring outside of the school, James argued that to establish and maintain a true learning culture, as educators, we must ‘inhabit the wild’ outside of the confines of educational institutions. He encouraged us to ‘remagicalise the world’, to ‘reinfect the population to rediscover the world’ rather than allowing them to become ‘numbed and dumbed down’ and suggested (along with examples of existing projects) that new technologies offer us these opportunities.

Chris Poole from Microsoft spoke about his vision for the Building Schools for the Future programme, highlighting the importance of education for the future of ‘UK plc’ in a competitive knowledge economy, where change was constant, and technology ubiquitous, making the world ‘flat’. He argued that education of the future should overcome the barriers of conservatism, tradition, lack of funding and problems of regulation, to centre on the ‘connected citizen’, rather than continuing the controlled and didactic traditions of the current education system.

In contrast, Steve Thompson of the University of Teeside showed us some of the possibilities of digital media in adult and community education, and illustrated the importance of using open source software to overcome some of the more technological barriers to learning. In his rich descriptions of his work on ‘digital villages’ in the north-east of England, he highlighted an important distinction between using technologies for their own sake, and using technologies as useful tools for digital expression, creativity and storytelling. In encouraging DIY media, with microphones from the pound shop, and animations using blu-tac, Steve showed us the possibilities of using technologies to help communities learn together, intergenerationally.

In summing up, Annika Small, Chief Executive of Futurelab drew out some themes from the day, including the need to redesign spaces which were non-hierarchical, which were informed by a well-developed vision for learning, and which drew on informal, out-of-school learning, incorporating learners of all ages. Such learning, in a digital world, will not require straightforward access to information, but a changed environment in which learners can participate and collaborate within communities to create new knowledge.

On Day 2 of the conference, Dan Sutch, a Learning Researcher from Futurelab talked about his ongoing research into models of innovation and innovative practice which can help us to understand how innovation in the creative, technology and educational sectors can inform the transformation of learning spaces. He spoke of the need to ‘unlearn’ some of what we take for granted about schools in order to consider afresh the barriers to and possibilities for innovation in education. This session was particularly innovative in Dan’s use of mobile text messaging to garner responses from the audience, and the production of a conference scenario by Tim Rudd and Ben Carruthers from Futurelab.

In the first keynote of the day Jeffrey Revoy, Senior Director of Yahoo! Europe Search and Local, talked about ‘Social Search and Social Learning’. His presentation looked at how Web 2.0 was changing the 'search world' from the delivery of machine-only results to results driven by human responses enabling more meaningful feedback, the sharing of advice and ultimately powerful learning opportunities. He highlighted the ever-increasing usage of social software sites such as Flickr, YouTube and Yahoo Answers, and explored how these might further change users’ experiences of learning in the near future.

Sean McDougall of Stakeholder Design focused on ‘Designing for Change’. He began by showing us three photographs of classrooms from 1905, 1950 and 2005 demonstrating how little the typical classroom had changed in 100 years, with only the furniture becoming cheaper and the postures of our students more slumped. He argued that for most young people school has become a chore and urged us to put the wonder back into learning, to make ‘school so compelling that it need not be compulsory’ and to design new ways of doing things not just new things. Following a three-month fact-finding trip abroad, Sean shared lessons from exemplary southern hemisphere schools including Unlimited, a school in New Zealand that has subverted almost every educational convention. He finished his presentation with an introduction to Fountaineers, a collaborative project with Futurelab in which we are handing over ownership to the pupils of a primary school to design, develop and maintain a programmable, interactive fountain within their school.

Tom Power and Jenny Leach from the Open University introduced us to the work that they’ve been doing in Sub Saharan Africa as part of DEEP (Digital Education Enhancement Project), which is enhancing existing learning spaces with handheld computers and digital cameras for young learners and their teachers in the Eastern Cape, South Africa.

The exemplar hands-on session enabled delegates to try out and comment on a variety of projects that have transformed the learning environment, physically and/or virtually. The showcase included resources developed both with and without support from Futurelab as well as examples of innovative building design and layout, both in and out of school. Exhibits/exhibitors included:

Learning spaces: Beauchamp College/GSS Architecture, Billboard, Meadlands Primary School and Grey Court Secondary School, St Francis of Assisi Primary School, DOT°, dRMM Architects - Kingsdale School and The Dura, Oculas, Open House, Urban Learning Space

Digital resources: ArtisanCam, Create-A-Scape, Film Street, Fizzees, Space Mission

In his presentation ‘Hang out your Learning’, Alistair Clark of NIACE (The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education) introduced the concept of a ‘digital washing line’ in helping adult learners to select approaches to learning that suit their needs and lifestyle, and described how lessons from e-learning had been adopted in adult and community learning. Anthony Bravo, Principal of Crossway’s Academy, presented an account of his experiences of visioning, designing and building a state-of-the-art school, and outlined some of the lessons learnt and indicators of success.

Mike Rumble of the QCA posed the question, ‘What is the Curriculum?’, and urged us to think again about the future of education, which he stressed, was ‘now’. He stated that making a difference to all learners meant equipping them with the skills needed to confront changes in work and travel, and to develop the values and attitudes of successful learners, confident individuals and active and responsible citizens, instead of working towards narrow measures of success. There was some discussion as to how much the QCA and Ofsted had supported or prevented this, but Mike pointed out that this was a time to think of long-term educational goals, involving asking questions about the what, how, who, when and where of organising learning.

In her closing keynote, Edith Ackerman of the University of Aix-Marseille and MIT School of Architecture talked about the nomadic lives of children, and the ‘clickerati’ generation. She outlined the ways in which children are now engaging with virtual, digital and physical spaces for both playing and learning, and set out the context in which we have to rethink and redesign learning spaces to encourage ‘new learning adventures’.

The conference highlighted that the time is ripe for educational reform. The possibilities afforded by new technologies and the investment in Building Schools for the Future may facilitate radical change in education. But what the conference also indicated was the need to develop a long-term educational vision which will inform the physical design of both school buildings and the virtual space of embedded and purposeful technologies in a digital world. If we are to revision as more than simply a response to a technologically-saturated and globalised world, then understanding the nature of the relationship between spaces, places and learning will be paramount.

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