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Merlin John

Does the UK need an IKEA of learning? Not so much a brand that supplies off-the-peg solutions for school furniture, furnishings, equipment and ICT, but a space where all these elements can be modelled by those tasked with creating engaging new learning spaces for new and remodelled schools and colleges?

The answer appears to be ‘Yes’, and it’s already starting to happen.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), the National College For School Leadership (NCSL), Partnerships for Schools (PfS) and their collaborators have all been pushing the development of learning spaces for some time. They have a pressing motive - Building Schools for the Future and the Primary Capital Programme. And research groups like Futurelab have also been leading with publications like its seminal ‘What if...? Re-imagining learning spaces’ report.

But it’s the commercial sector that has finally opened the door for a glimpse of what is possible. Northgate Education, an ICT partner in a number of BSF projects made an adventurous first attempt early in 2008 with its space at the Building Schools Exhibition and Conference in Manchester. But there weren’t enough teachers and school leaders among the visitors for the idea to catch.

It finally came to life in January at the BETT 2009 event at Olympia, London. By a happy accident of circumstances, leading schools ICT supplier RM had been hiring its own space at Olympia 2, next to the main show, for some time. With a massive hall space that had previously been used for customer events, it decided to conduct an experiment and bring in partner companies to create a huge expanse of learning spaces dubbed the Imaginarium.

A range of settings were created, from ‘classrooms’ with flexible furniture and display technology to highly focused and imaginative special needs installations. Among the partners were specialist companies like Isis Concepts, the expert design and manufacture furniture company. And students were brought in to work in these settings with their teachers. It was a living laboratory for learning and the response was overwhelming. One top UK educator told me, “RM has finally got it.”

To be fair, it wasn’t just RM and its employees that “got it”, but most of the visitors too. Teachers and heads could be seen with tape measures, working out the sorts of set-ups they could employ back in their own schools.

It isn’t a standard classroom and I don’t understand it

Although the feedback was massively positive, the negative reactions were interesting too. For example the teachers who were disappointed because “it isn’t a standard classroom and I don’t understand it”. They were absolutely right. This was the first public, commercial display to intimate that classrooms and corridors as they are currently understood are on their way out – in a discourse where even the word ‘school’ is hotly contested.

RM’s first response to the Olympia 2 experience has been to build its own ‘imaginarium’ in former office space (Building 135) next to its base in Abingdon. The REAL Centre (Rethinking Education and Learning) is scheduled to start work in April and RM will open it up to local schools to be used by learners, teachers and school leaders, and to other organisations too.

RM is also talking to local authorities that have already identified suitable empty properties like old warehouses and office spaces to set up their own centres to model learning spaces. And plans are going ahead for a ‘roadshow’.

It’s important to understand that this is not just about RM. The company was fortunate to be in the right learning space at the right time, as it were. Now it’s time to see what the policy makers can unlock. There is already talk of ‘draw down’ money being made available for those involved in BSF and PCP to create their own ‘imaginariums’. This is the beginning.

The idea has been taken up because it helps with one of the most challenging parts of the new-build and remodelling processes after school communities develop their visions for learning (what they think learning should be for the next 30, even 40 years). It’s known as mapping the pedagogy to space – designing the physical spaces that will support the vision. And everyone at the heart of this work now understands that ‘settings’ are crucial for these spaces.

Returning to the IKEA theme, the drive to make transformation and innovation synonymous with new schools intensifies the need for imagining learning spaces. But as yet there is no IKEA of learning spaces.

IKEA is a fitting brand to play with because it is often invoked in a sniffy kind of way when educators want to describe the shameful, ‘last minute’ way some of those responsible for new schools (some head teachers too unfortunately) pick school furnishings and furniture. "They just went down to IKEA and bought a load of chairs," is the familiar refrain.

No offence intended to IKEA here; what they really meant was that they bought cheap chairs, the kind of chairs that, in truth, you don’t even see in IKEA. And if you think that’s an exaggeration, think again. A visit to a wonderful new London school last week, where no compromise had been made on inspiring learning spaces, revealed that much of it had been furnished with the cheapest and saddest chairs and tables imaginable. Hard, plastic chairs that you would not want to sit in for more than a minute. What a let-down, and it is still relatively common.

Still creating innovative architecture at cost of learning spaces

NCSL Special Projects Director Hannah Jones, who is responsible for the leadership programmes for BSF and PCP, puts it this way: “Years after the first Building Schools for the Future projects began, we are still concentrating on creating innovative architecture at the cost of creating formal and informal learning spaces that contribute more directly to the day to day learning that takes place.

“Furniture is the basis of where our learners spend more than 80% of their school day, and at the moment it is still too much of an afterthought, rather than being one of the first thoughts of the design process. This is an issue we will continue to champion through the BSF Leadership Programme, ensuring the school leaders we work with are fully aware of the importance of furniture during their briefing and design stages.”
Back to IKEA. A more positive reference comes when you speak to school leaders who are less interested in the stereotype atriums of the first wave of new builds than an IKEA ‘shed’ in which they can model the settings - the furniture, equipment and ICT - that bring learning spaces to life.

Computer people know all about the single most important aspect of using computers. They call it the ‘human computer interface’. If you think an Apple Mac is easy to use, that’s probably down to its well-designed graphical user interface (GUI). Well think of ‘settings’ as the ‘interface’ between learners and the learning spaces they inhabit during their time in school. It has to be comfortable and engaging because it can ultimately affect standards.

‘Credit Crunch Me’ – office space plus ‘settings’ equals learning spaces

Elite architects might choke on the thought, but the money spent on settings is likely to have more effect on learning than the shells of the building, however innovative they might be. And that knowledge opens up all sorts of possibilities, some radical. For example, Tom Weaver, a design consultant who works with Hannah Jones’ consultative committee of head teachers, has produced a paper – ‘Credit Crunch Me’ - suggesting how empty office space could be used for learning.

As the recession bites and office space becomes cheaper, this could release premises with first-rate infrastructure and services for learning. What would come to the fore in these flexible spaces, of course, would be the settings.

Since January, imagining the settings for these spaces has become easier. The Olympia 2 experience has proved that it is possible to model settings for learning spaces. And that it’s crucial to model ICT together with the furniture and furnishings.

RM’s Head of Partnership Marketing, Amanda Peck, says that this was an important lesson for the company, and Olympia 2 was a “eureka moment”. “The crux of the matter is that you can create fantastic learning spaces and you can have wonderful furniture and ICT but it has to be flexible and movable. Different teachers and kids will be using it at different times.

”The success of Olympia 2 was not just the furniture and the settings but the integration with the classroom resources. We had all the bits and pieces – the crayons, the cards, the SEN devices, it wasn’t any one thing. It was the set of furniture with the resources coming together in an innovative way. And working symbiotically together so that a child could lift a laptop out from the storage under the seating and plug it in because there was electricity integrated into the furniture, and sit there and do some work and put it away when she had finished. That is what made it work.

“It’s almost as if part of the innovation and improvement agenda has shifted from the design of the actual building to the design of the inside. In six, eight, ten months’ time I think everyone will be focusing on this area, and really test it. It’s not until you see it that you get it.”

Ring-fencing funding for ‘settings’ could find favour

Amanda Peck warns that there are cost implications, and it’s not good enough to cut corners at what some people think is the end of a contract. Furniture that integrates with ICT, from companies like Isis, is likely to cost more than standard furniture until economies of scale can be attained. But programmes like BSF offer designers and furniture providers a unique opportunity to raise the benchmark and bring in innovation.

She is also warm to the idea raised in a number of areas that funds for settings should be ring-fenced. She says that it works for ICT in BSF and that if it was extended to settings it could be very effective.

Moving on to RM’s REAL Centre she said, “We need to capture more as part of this work. Then we can get kids in testing and using these learning settings, and having a go, which is one of the reasons for having it permanently housed at RM, for us to observe. Is it working? How are they learning? What are they doing or not doing? What are they struggling with? To test our products in these learning settings is one of the priorities for having this permanently housed at RM. It’s all part of the learning that came out of Olympia 2 that we are putting into this permanent place. We will now take this work to the next level.”

For anyone involved in school renewal Amanda Peck singles out the British Council for School Environments, currently creating a Great Schools campaign, as a rich source of help. “They really are trying very hard to help and support everybody who is in these programmes, not just the schools and local authorities but also the commercial companies around it to get it right. Hence the workshop they are organising to help people understand how the BB98 and 99 guidance for schools is a lot more flexible than people realise. And working with settings will help prove that.”

Meanwhile, RM is already working on its ‘imaginarium’ presence at Olympia 2 alongside next year’s BETT 2010. Olympia 2 is not open on the Saturday of BETT so RM will open an extra day on the Tuesday so that it can cater for the international visitors to the Government’s Learning and Technology World Forum (LATWF) at the beginning of the week.

The challenge now rests with Becta and the DCSF to demonstrate the creativity and diplomacy to meld the LATW, BETT 2010 and RM’s Olympia 2 learning spaces feature into one, coherent BETT Week – it would be a true demonstration of transformation and innovation in more senses than one. If they are short of ideas they could always take a walk around IKEA…

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