Dott 07

After presentations from the Eco Design Challenge and OurNewSchool project teams, the audience gathered together to discuss sustainability, schools and schooling. Read the transcript below, or listen again here (17MB, 37.50mins)

John Thackara: So, we had a gallop through those two projects and I guess the common denominator was finding ways to empower schools, the people in them or as organisations to take more of a proactive and leading role in shaping their futures. Nick what have we learned about from this kind of a first round so to speak, what would you do differently next time?

Nick Devitt: Ooh start with the easy ones. What would we do differently next time? I think we would probably spend more time with the schools to start with. We did workshops first with the teachers in September 2006. We were a fairly small team, Rachel and myself and I think we would probably have preferred to spend more, maybe go and see each of the schools that came to the workshops and spend a bit more time with them actually on site with the students to introduce them to the subjects. ‘Cause I know that some schools kind of looked at the Eco design challenging, kind of made assumptions that there was quite a lot of work to do when they looked at the footprinting. But like I said at the beginning, it was kind of as much or as little as they wanted to do so I think we’d probably spend a bit more time with the schools in the first place which is where they kind of, if we did it in a bigger scale you’d probably have to engage partners who were working with schools already to help them develop that.

John Thackara: Are there people here who were in the project from the school side that would have us do it differently next time? Well have a think about that so this is you know we can carry on. So you Julia, no Steve, how would you like it to happen OurNewSchool, if you were to start again what could we have done differently?

Steve Gater: Thank you Nick. I think um it is a question of time. It’s a matter of having quality time to look at the brief first of all and then to share the implications of that across the whole school community and its finding time to do that within very busy schedules both for students and staff. Inevitably we cut corners and it’s finding ways to engage the whole community both within the school and beyond, parents, governors and local residents. That’s not easy.

John Thackara: Are there examples from other subjects or periods of history when school communities have been engaged through that kind of time being available?

Steve Gater: Not that I’m particularly aware of. We are in an age where it’s becoming more common to listen to the punters if you like. Student voices is something that’s happening globally and we clearly are in a competitive market in terms of attracting young people to a school so we do have to listen to the communities. I think it’s the engaging the communities as a whole both within and without with a common purpose that’s the key to success and I think we’ve gone some way down that road but it’s not an instant fix. It’s a long term goal.



John Thackara: I went to this very bizarre meeting just at the beginning of the Dott programme in London of some policy makers and teachers and there was a whole day discussed about how do we empower teachers to take more of a, I hope it wasn’t your school that was at that, empowering teachers to take a more a kind of proactive role. Give them the opportunity to shape not just curriculums but the way the school behaves and endless statements of this fact and then the Minister stood up right at the end and said we’ve taken this on board, it’s terribly important.  We’re going to make half a day per year available for teachers to do this thing called ‘take more control over everything else’ and I just thought during the day that half a day a week would be the very minimum that if I were to be a teacher I would need and then somebody stood up and said ok you can have half a day a year for this! Is this time question something we need to be more militant about?

Steve Gater: I think possibly there is. The um, you may not be aware but the schools have five contractual training days per year but secondary schools this year have been given an additional one, a one off because the curriculum is changing throughout the secondary school phases. I wonder if a clear focus and maybe Hannah might give us a little bit more thinking on this one, a clearer focus on schools within communities, the children’s services, children’s services’ plan we’re expecting from the Government soon. Um, whether there should be a very clear statement to say that some of that time that is there should be used to work with community to develop the Every Child Matters agenda. There needs to be some stimulus, some accountability I think across the board to generate the enthusiasm and the commitment to make that happen.

John Thackara: I don’t work in education but if you work for IBM, 15% of your annual working time is for you to spend on training and personal development. You have to make some accounting for it but it’s not pre-judged or controlled at all by the Employer. It doesn’t sound to me that five days is comparable to 15% that you get in a big global corporation. Should we be aspiring to that kind of degree?

Steve Gater: I think if we want quality thinking time and quality action yes we do.  

John Thackara: Now, anybody other thoughts? Susan? This is Susan Ben.  

Susan Ben: Thanks. I just wanted to follow on that a bit because we work a lot with CPD with teachers and I’ve noticed that in teacher training there’s very little time as well. There’s a lot of pressure and by the time teachers have some experience they’re desperate for time so all the way along the trajectory of wanting to be a teacher and then having experience there’s little reflective time. If everybody knows that and everybody’s complaining, in your role where leadership is setting agendas, what can we do about it?

Hannah Jones: I mean as I say there are many initiatives that are coming on board and there are many responsibilities that are going into schools that I think are the responsibility of the community as well as just the schools actually. We’ve had technology recently, there’s ECM, there’s extended

John Thackara: I’m going to have a militant campaign against acronyms starting now. What does ECM stand for?

Hannah Jones: Every Child Matters agenda which encompasses all the other government initiatives. We are tackling it in different ways. I think the issue that we need to do is to raise the profile and importance and get clarity around our messages. Um, so that school leaders can prioritise their training and professional development within their own schools. Secondly, such as the programme that we’re doing, it’s unheard of to do a five day two term programme with school leaders for up to three school leaders and we are insisting with local authorities that they don’t send one person they send three people from every school for all five days. So in addition to those five days in schools there are other programmes that are going through and that five days is quite a good vehicle to get issues such as sustainability which is a fifth of our programme and increases towards the end.

John Thackara: Ok. So let’s go onto that cos somebody said in one of the presentations that sustainability should not be an add-on. We had last week, a policy maker described the fact that we’ve gone from 10 to 15% of our allocated resources to this issue. Um, you just said something similar. Is it not the case that sustainability is the precondition for life on Earth and therefore should we not turn it all upside down and say, first comes everything is about that and then we allocate the rest of education accordingly. I’m being extreme but I just think that talking about slicing little bits of percentages when we’re talking about the future of the species on the planet seems to be a bit out of balance.

Hannah Jones: I agree. Our priority in schools at the moment is the Every Child Matters after the case with Victoria so ensuring that children are happy, safe, secure and have got lifelong learning, social economic and sustainability is threaded throughout that. So of course that lifelong learning agenda is there. Unfortunately with Government, I mean not unfortunately because all we have the BSF money for, the sixty five billion, is for us to address the needs of learners and communities. It’s just easier to get a package called Building Schools for the Future with that money rather than sustainability or other issues.  It’s just the way we sell it and what we attach it to. All that sixty five billion pounds is for is not bricks and mortar. It’s about rethinking the way we want education to work and we’re just using that as a vehicle to get it through so I agree.

John Thackara: Ok. You’re not here as a whipping person at all.

Hannah Jones: No you whip away. It’s fine.

John Thackara: Now, I want some practitioners and people from school, come to you Lesley in a moment.  Is it true that, they say sustainability generates energy so to speak of its own accord as we heard from some of the speakers this morning, or do you see this as a hard issue to kind of build into an already overfull programme?  Teachers, other teachers, Sir?

Man 1: I think um generally there’s a problem in some schools that people seem to think that sustainability issues apply specifically to the Geography teacher and the Science teachers.  And I think some kind of awareness raising of how it could um be embedded in other areas of the curriculum would be a useful thing to encourage personally.

John Thackara: I have to just, I’m not going to, there was a story which I tell a lot about a famous issue of the Guardian which one of these panels of scientists said Life on Earth under threat say scientists.  And in the Guardian, it was on page 13 under International News and he was saying well right ok it’s international, it’s out there page 13 End of Life on Earth!  Um, anybody else who’s in a school or teaching who has, just says it’s interesting but difficult?  Is that a starting point?  Well that’s a bad question, ok next.

Sorry Hannah, yeah.

Hannah Jones: We, in the research that we carried out 98% of school leaders said that it was important or very important so it was high in their list of awareness but when we came through um, what did come out of it that it was actually low in terms of their priority of delivery at the time. So I think everybody is agreeing with the statement that this is critical but I think as you said we need issues and ways of, steps to take people through to actually guide them through this process so that it naturally comes further up in the agenda and easiness to tackle and not just seen as the Green issue.

John Thackara: Sir, can you tell us who you are please.

Andy Haddon: Andy Haddon from Newcastle University.  I think it’s not just thinking from the teachers’ perspective. From the pupils’ perspective they are engaged certainly at a very young age with issues around recycling, certainly of things like Eco Schools’ programmes being developed in school. They’re thoroughly engaged with the topic and um it’s building on that engagement is what we have to do, yeah.

John Thackara: Steve?



Steve Gater: Can I pick up um just as a for instance, there is funding available to schools for travel plans. So the excellent project that Lord Lawson did on bike sheds is replicable in schools with funding to match but it means that in order to gain that funding the school has to demonstrate that it’s listening to its audience, its students, its parents, its community, it’s doing the right type of small scale appraisals which are tapping into the issue and looking at the current situation and developing plans to improve. So exactly what’s happening there is at Walker is that we will be building our Bike Shed in the short term. But the importance there is that the student voice is actually being heard and acted upon. It is there and I think what Andy’s saying is its finding ways to channel that information, that engagement which produces results. And in terms of responding to the is it the Geography teacher, is it the Science teacher whatever, as a Head who gets quite a lot of email to distribute amongst the staff, first port of call

John Thackara: How many do you get a week?

Steve Gater: Oh a lot! Quite a number, I mean there is a substantive interest across the Country. My first port of call is to the Champion so we for example have a champion who has created a garden with a food veg pot, a small scale thing. I won’t tell you what the discipline is of the teacher. She simple is a champion and it’s a way of encouraging champions within the school community to take that forward.

John Thackara: Sir?

Man 2: Um yeah, I think that idea of Champions is a very good idea and I think possibly it’s not just err it might be something worthwhile to look into is actually the systems design in schools of the way that different teachers in schools can interact with outside agencies.

John Thackara: No, I think that’s for me where these two projects have a lot in common. We all thought for much of the time, well I did that they were totally, one was about building buildings and the other one was about the environment and projects to do with that but then they kind of merged together in a very interesting way. But Nick did you have the experience of it being difficult for Heads to know who to send the project to in the first phase?



Nick Devitt: I suppose we did yeah ‘coz it wasn’t a project that sat really, I think as Brian said, it didn’t sit really well in any particular subjects so it’s more about the school, how the school operates and who’s interested in the subject so we’ve, in one particular school it was the ICT teacher who picked up the project because she saw an opportunity for collecting data and building spreadsheets and it kind of went on from there. Other ones it was Geography or it just varied or Science. It was err, it depends on each school and I think Steve will probably bear that out. It’s all about personalities.

John Thackara: Steve, if I sent an email to the Environment Champion Walker Technology College, would that make your job easier of knowing who to send it to?

Steve Gater: Yes it probably would. Err and can I say that that piece of paper whatever  it was would go to any adult within the school and any group of children in the school.  And I think the big challenge as well for us with our new school and sustainability is that the school workforce is bigger than the core heart of teachers and developing the expertise and tapping the talent and experience of that wider workforce is absolutely crucial because schooling of the future is not simply dictated by teachers. The Gatekeepers of information don’t exist with the modern technology that we have.

Julia Schaeper: Yeah, I think that’s a really good and interesting point and I was just going to tie into this that um from our work at Engine we very much realise that looking at systems and processes within the space, there’s also different you know roles that are changing and roles have to change as well. And we very much rely on the teacher being a teacher in the way that maybe 50 year ago you know the teacher was and the sort of responsibilities a teacher took on but nowadays it’s very much about redefining maybe leadership and the roles of teachers themselves which then might free up time in return for people to actually take on new responsibilities and things that are needed today.

John Thackara: Yes.

Woman 1: I mean we definitely try and support school leadership teams again in coming along but one to take responsibility for sustainability, one for technology and again it doesn’t matter who it is as long as they have that passion.  But I think what schools need support in is this capacity and expertise and I was really interested in the coordination of those designers and if some way we can replicate that more wide scale so that we have a portal where people can get in touch with people that would be great.

John Thackara: We’ll come onto that ‘designers into schools’ in a moment because Lady Morris is also here.  But can I just ask about, supposing we take a subject like water which every school in the world has issues with water. Are there better ways there now to share knowledge horizontally across schools, supposing more and more schools start to do design projects to make their footprints smaller, um it seems to be rather hit and miss at the moment to how people share knowledge about what other people are doing. Are there better ways that we could imagine to help schools share knowledge and then accelerate the process of learning and improving? I’m throwing to everybody so I just want to maybe get into the downstream side of it rather than, we’ve done the upstream side you know the kind of structure of school, the leadership, the kind of policy framework but ok supposing that these projects begin to multiply when the groups of students and whatever do things for themselves. Where are the resources to come from that several of the speakers mentioned before the break? Yeah, Andy?

Andy Haddon: Well um for ourselves I think we have a team that is that resource in Newcastle that’s developing the focus to be that resource.  

John Thackara: You better tell us what it is. It’s the second part, it’s the next part of the programme but we’re going to merge it altogether.

Andy Haddon: Yeah. Well it um, it is part of the Science City programme. Maybe some people are aware of Science City? Gordon Brown named various Science Cities around the U.K. but um it’s under that brand and it’s a collaborative project with the City Council and the University working with the Enviro schools team which is the team that delivers Eco Schools and leads onto sustainability in Newcastle City schools. So there’s a dedicated resource within the university that works with the City Council team coordinating a pool of resources that can be used in schools and coordinating the delivery team that can deliver that into schools as well.

John Thackara: Ok so Enviro schools cos I spent two years, I came from out of the Country like a Martian and I try to understand what, so there is Enviro schools and then there is sustainability schools and schooling, S3.

Andy Haddon: Enviro schools is purely the Newcastle City Council team that delivers sustainability in schools and one of the

John Thackara: Aah, is this the Green Flag team?

Andy Haddon: That one of the initiatives they help support delivery is the Eco schools, the Green Flag programme yeah. So there’s just, there’s a dedicated team that delivers the Green Flag programme and other things.

John Thackara: Is the Green Flag programme a national one?

Andy Haddon: It’s European wide.

John Thackara: European wide. So who here knows the difference between the Green Flag scheme and, I get confused and I am a parent and I have engaged with these systems over the last two years and I find it perplexing to figure out who’s doing what.

Andy Haddon: Well it is confusing so what we’re trying to provide is that co-ordinating team that people can come to if they’ve developed delivery resource which Dott 07 has itself. But then we have a team that can facilitate delivery that’s not just our small team but a team with a network of partners, both commercial and public sector partners. For example like yourselves or any commercial organisation like Northumbrian Water going back to your water comment. They’ve developed a lot of delivery resources to be used in schools but they have no delivery equip um materials, delivery materials but they have no resources. People are doing their day to day jobs. What we’re offering them is the delivery resource through the use of post grads and under grads.

John Thackara: So next time we talk to Northumbria Water they can sponsor free weeks of time for all the teachers, Geography teachers in the North East of England and

Andy Haddon: Well it’s an interesting area. CSR, you know corporate social responsibility and that arena is something, it’s something of interest to the large corporates and small SMEs, well an SME in the region of up to 250 people so it’s quite a large organisation. But they’re interested in CSR activity and so one employee may go into one school because his son goes there and have a very limited impact by doing that. So what we’re offering them is a much broader project and much more payback for their contribution by being part of a larger programme of delivery and coordinating that and so whether they bring the resource of funding or resource of time or resource of materials, there’s lots of things they can bring. But there’s lots of benefits, it’s developing that range of win, win things that can deliver sustainability on a wider basis.

John Thackara: Thank you. I mean we are not going to solve the problem of multiple initiatives at this meeting and somebody told me that it was like the car industry, that somebody invented a car and then a short while later there were 200 car companies and a short while after that there were five car companies and maybe the passage of time will sort that out. So we’ll come back to that. Let’s look at the subject more practically of designers going into schools to work with the student groups. So Rachel, what would you do differently next time in terms of sending the designers into the schools to work with the student groups?



Rachel Deller: It’s difficult because um well by nature you know it’s a voluntary project and the designers always have a lot of pressure on their time. As Andy said, with the corporate social responsibility, that means that a lot of companies do have um sort of an element of time which they can give to projects such as this one. Being able to match them with schools and actually make a visit happen and make you know such a busy school’s timetable fit around a designer's busy timetable and that kind of thing fits. I mean in some instances we had some students involved and that was helpful because their timetable was often more flexible but then you’re missing that element of experience which is equally important to the students in what they get.

John Thackara:  But supposing I was a very rich benefactor and I wanted to pay for the amount of design time that was required for a school to properly redesign its water systems, how many days of design time are we talking about?

Rachel Deller: How long is a piece of string?

John Thackara: Well and so we had a very short piece of string so my question is, of course it creates a kind of an appetite and an initial contact but most of these guys went in for what one or two days, in most cases?

Nick Devitt: Yeah. We invited them in to go in for a minimum of one day. I think from your very first question what would we do differently; I think if we could the designers or the experts to go into the schools sooner at the beginning of a project and yeah at several points. What we did and we had lots of discussions about when the designers should go into the schools and we decided it should be in the 2nd stage but I think in hindsight if we could’ve organised it and got the designers to go into the schools, work with the kids throughout the project and also had some resource maybe to pay for some relief teaching, supply cover which we did discuss as well but I think the price tag when we looked at all the schools was about seventy grand or something like that so we declined on that one. But getting designers in sooner or experts in sooner to work with the students and the teachers would be brilliant.

John Thackara: Sir?

John Wiseman: Can I just pick up on that very briefly.

John Thackara: Can you tell us who you are please?

John Wiseman: Sorry, John Wiseman. I work on the um for Sunderland City Council on their building schools for the future programme and I think that the two schemes that we’ve heard about today, I think the key messages for me are um how important stakeholder engagement is particularly pupil engagement and that’s becoming increasingly obvious now. People are beginning to realise that BSF is about transformation and not about buildings and I think that’s an important revelation which is helping us all.  I think in terms of the stakeholder engagement and the pupil engagement, Nick’s point there about getting pupils involved and schools involved at the earliest possible stage as Steve and his team have at Walker again is very very vital; because as Steve and Hannah will probably know, in BSF very soon, sooner that you think you get involved in the P word. I think, how many people have mentioned the word ‘process’ today and it is a process and it’s a very very complicated process which involves a lot of peoples’ time and certainly a lot of time from Head teachers, school governors and senior leadership teams. If you don’t do that early work first and you don’t do it early enough to be able to say these are our findings from all of this good work that we’ve been doing with the designers, with the pupils and these are from our briefs. These are the sorts of things that can go into the hard briefs when we get to the actual selection phase for the designers and the builders. If you haven’t done that early enough you’re going to lose the opportunity to do it ‘coz all of a sudden you’re involved in the partnerships for schools’ processes and all of that and the paperwork and that’s the sort of thing that Heads and governors and local authority people have to do as a priority and if you haven’t done that early work first there ain’t gonna be time to do it properly and you’re kind of doing it afterwards as a bolt on rather than something which is actually going to inform the process in the way that should. And I think that’s one of the lessons learnt across BSF for the later waves. In Sunderland we’ve got a group of schools that we’re selecting the designer for this week for the first phase. For the second phase, the disadvantage for them is that they’re not going to get that money to redevelop Thornhill, Southmoor etc. etc. before 5 / 6 years time. The St. Roberts and the Washingtons and the Castle Views and so on that are in this phase, they’ve got the benefit of that early money and that early transformation but the lessons learnt I think will be key and if we get that process right that’ll help us all in later waves at BSF.

John Thackara: One of the interesting transitions in Dott in the last two years, we started on day one, there’s a number which may or may not be true called 80% of the environmental impact of buildings and products is determined at the design stage. And I think what we’ve learnt in this project and many others that maybe it should be the word the ‘pre-design’ stage. So we need the designers in at the beginning when people start to think about these projects not when the design process has started with these very short time frames and these massive procurement kind of pressures so maybe we should modify the propaganda.

John can I just say

John Thackara: Yes, where are you?

In the middle.

John Thackara: Oh sorry!

Woman 2: Can I just say, I mean as you say the lessons learnt but there’s such a rapid turnover. We’re already on wave five going onto wave six and there are only 15 waves so although it’s still 20 / 20 and as you say it’s getting in there very very early.  I mean the one key thing I’ve heard today is there’s designer, there’s time and the scaling are for these.  I mean surely there is a very simple wave and if it’s just on a website of matching all these things and mapping out all of the different agencies that are there to support you ‘cause if you don’t think about it early enough you’re into procurement, you’re into processes and it’s too late because you either decide to say no to the money and go back and think again or you get a build in and people are deciding on buildings.

John Thackara: Is it possible to take the money and not rebuild your building?

No but it

John Thackara: Maybe we could propose that from Dott. Sounds like a good idea to me

But it is possible

John Thackara: Spend it on projects.

If you go into financial close, if you’re a local authority with OT (?) and secondary schools, if you go into financial close and you want to re-change your style and design and perhaps have more of an emphasis on sustainability, if you become a week behind in terms of your procurement you would lose in terms of interest a quarter of a million pound a week.  So you wouldn’t change it regardless of sustainability or anything else.

John Thackara: Yes.

Danielle San Jorge: Hello I’m Danielle San Jorge. I’m from Lancaster University. I just  moved from Italy. For me it was really really difficult to get to understand your school education, you know these abbreviations and qualifications and everything. Um, I’m working on something similar to Engine group or work other sort of service design and we approaching education in this last month and we’re starting a small project with a school in Burnley which is within this BSF project. I suddenly realise that there are a lot of things going on like school works, initiatives, innovation, innovation units, so there are many and all 7 and all working on similar things. So I think it would be really important to create this link, a network understanding how design can work and more effective in a time effective way, find a way to bring this energy altogether in a way that it’s really effective and not just about as we were saying buildings. So find a way to create, bring together all this energy and capacity and tools to make it more effective.

John Thackara: I have a secret for you, this is it!  The purpose of this gathering today is to in a small way bring some of these initiatives together. There’s the I Raise (?) initiative, there is the Carbon Detective we’re going to hear about in a moment, uhh others, Susan Ben’s about to go to India an start doing projects there.  Um there is no kind of magic solution other than to kind of meet every now and again and say oh you’re doing that as well.  How extraordinary!  

Dawnne McGeachy: Dawnne McGeachy, The Lighthouse, we’re doing it as well!  We’ve been doing it for the last three or four years in schools and with the BDP and fortunately Scottish Government

John Thackara: What’s BDP mean?

Dawnne McGeachy: The similar thing to what’s happening down here in terms of school redesign and we’ve been working with architects and local authorities and The Lighthouse has been going in and working with communities and developing client ships and you know interventions really that get to the bottom of what do the peoples want, what do the communities want and just exactly what’s been said here. And there’s multiple projects that have come out The Lighthouse basically based on that. And further to that Scottish Government have refunded it and I think now it’s called Schools for the Future and now it’s in its 2nd phase. So I think there’s a lot of lessons to be learned and I think that’s exactly, it has, the intervention has to start very early on and I think if you look at designers as a bolt on to a problem then you’re never going to resolve the problem. Designers are integral to the very start of any project I would say particularly if it’s designing a school. So and I think the most important thing about that is how do you engage people in the design process and there’s a lot of things that you need to do in order for that to happen as well, so the earlier the intervention I think the better.

John Thackara: Earlier is better.  Somebody, Susan?

Susan: Yeah. I just wanted to say that, I can’t say very much about it apparently yet but the curriculum authority have commissioned us to use design principles with a bunch of teachers and their own officials to interpret the new curriculum, the flexibility in the new curriculum and I think that’s really exciting because, I don’t want to be too enthusiastic because we haven’t done it yet so I don’t know how it’s going to work. But if it’s positive then this is a really good forum in which to share that initial experiment and to grow it I think. What scares me about institutions is that they kind of own something and then they put money into it and it then dies or, I think this kind of forum is, to answer your concern, really important to keep alive so I hope we can do that. And I would love to know if you know in Italy a curriculum for Slow Food which is actually a curriculum embedded in schools. Do you know about that?  If there isn’t one I hope somebody will invent one.

John Thackara: Well we don’t do slow in these debates. It’s all very hectic and break neck speed. Now I’m conscious that we have another presentation or two to come.  Nick, are you going to...

I just wanted to add one thing, that there are places that people can get assistance particularly from the private sector and if people have heard of Education Business Partnership. They’re always looking for schools to do work with the private sector and if people are interested in designers there are, people are paid there to link the two things together. They’re not everywhere but they are in some local authority areas.

John Thackara: Lesley, now you were and are from time to time involved in a national campaign to get designers into schools. Can you now undertake to get designers into every BSF project on day one.

Lesley Morris: I wish! That would be fantastic. I mean just two things to add I think. I mean I think this is really useful because it does put a spotlight onto some of the problems and issues and all this stuff that sort of bubbles up and as somebody has said you know it’s not coordinated and it maybe lives for a while and then dies. One of the things that we are trying to do is, in fact we have now got some funding from DCSF to do, is to

John Thackara: What does that stand for?

Lesley Morris: The Department for Children Schools and Families

John Thackara: Thank you.



Lesley Morris: Responsible for the national curriculum, to actually create a website on Design my School which is something we worked on at the Design Council going back a few years now with the Learning Environment’s Campaign. I think there are people here that have been involved in it. But it is a tool that enables schools to do this early thinking so it’s something that could be there for people to right at the really, before they’re even anywhere on the horizon of a Building Schools for Future programme, to start look at you know what are the issues, what are the priorities, what’s the brief that that school really wants to put forward. So that’s good news I think because at least now that department has actually agreed that this is need and that should be taken forward. The other thing about designers I think what we’ve seen here and what we know from the Designers and Schools week that we ran at the Design Council, is that designers can be fantastic facilitators and enablers for some of these sorts of activities.

So just bringing those processes and thinking into the schools and I think it’s also in an interesting way of this issue about professional development for teachers. If you’ve got external people coming in and you’re doing it live as it were you don’t have to take teachers out so it’s not so much a case always of having to provide to that resource. I think you can do it by having people going into the school.  The issue about linking that back, I mean yes we are trying to build up, recreate, establish that connection again of designers working with schools. We’re talking with Creative Partnerships who are already doing quite a lot of this in terms of creative practitioners of all sorts and they are paid actually to go into schools and work with schools. There aren’t many designers on that scheme at the moment so that’s one opportunity, to build that up. Linking that right back though to sustainability and the topic we’ve been talking about here, one of the drawbacks we’ve found at the moment is that there are not that many designers who know an awful lot about the subject. So there’s a job to be done to actually get that knowledge and understanding I think within the design community as much as within the schools.

John Thackara: Don’t even start on that subject right now! We have a third bit of the programme and people are looking, we’re working very hard and very fast. Can I suggest we have another short break and then we have three national speakers about the Carbon Detectives' Kit and in terms of the shared interest herein, firstly how do we make sense of the multiple initiatives, secondly which tools work and how can we improve them and thirdly how do we kind of connect horizontally. This is an important third part of the day’s agenda so let’s have a 5 minute break and then we’ll have, Andy Haddon will talk about and Rebecca Gibson and Richard Dawson on the Carbon Detectives' Kit which will rather well tie the bits together that we’ve been talking about. So, 5 minutes and then we’ll see you back here.