[RE]LEARN 2020 - The Learning Innovation Festival

At a time when the design of new school learning spaces has been so dynamic and exciting, Covid-19 has raised important questions about priorities and fundamentals. At first sight this seems to imply important new constraints to accommodate heightened safety standards.

And yet, might Covid act as a catalyst for change in a more dynamic way, encouraging us to rethink our approach to school design altogether? In the post Covid world, the use of outdoor learning spaces, the role of the school as a community centre and the need to accommodate pastoral care and individual wellbeing all take on a new meaning. How will the increasing acceptability of online learning affect the use of spaces at school centres, and the reasons for which they exist? Will schools become ‘drop in’ centres for older students whose access to their teachers will be a mix of online teaching, independent learning and face to face consultation, mentoring and discussion? 

One thing is certain. If spaces at ‘schools’ are going to be imaginatively reconceptualised to take learning, social interaction and  recreation to new levels in the post Covid period, there will need to be some serious conversations between educators, designers, engineers, parents and, not least, the students themsleves.

In fact that sounds more exciting than constraining, precisely because Covid-19 has posed such fundamental questions about schools as centres of learning and why they are built in the way they are built.