The Women of the Welfare Landscape team ran an interactive workshop for students at Styal Primary School about Landscape Architecture with a particular focus on the work that Brenda Colvin did for their own village of Styal.
After a short quiz that challenged the children to think about what kinds of landscapes are designed, and an introduction to Colvin and her work, Luca, Laura and Joy took the class out into the village to explore. Using maps and Colvin’s historic plans, the children began to build connections between what they could see around them and what Colvin had intended through her designs. They were fascinated to read the maps and spot where she had drawn a path or a tree on the plan, to then realise they could see those elements in front of their eyes.
After this, everyone went back to the classroom to get the children doing their own landscape designs. They were brilliant at using their imagination to create playful, interactive plans and models with elements such as skate parks and adventure playgrounds, sculpture gardens and large lakes with bridge walkways. By the end of the afternoon many of the year group expressed enormous pride and satisfaction in having created collaborative designs with their classmates and said they would look at their village in a a new way going forward.
The workshop not only showed the staff and students what is possible when helping young children engage with design issues, but it will also be a valuable compliment to the Women of the Welfare Landscape exhibition that is being shown at Quarry Bank Mill over the summer. The teacher expressed her delight at the way each child had really engaged with the subject and said she would endeavour to take the class over the the Mill to see their models on display at the exhibition.
