In 2008 Children & the Arts ran a pilot project called ArchitectureQuest. The pilot aimed to introduce children from one London primary school to the built environment around them, increasing their understanding of and pride in the area whilst teaching them architectural terms and encouraging them to illustrate what they saw.
The children were partnered with an urban designer and a visual artist and together they observed buildings from different perspectives - through visits to different buildings on foot, during a cruise along the Thames and a flight on the London Eye. They also tried their hand at the traditional wattle and daub technique, made rubbings of different building materials and made scale models of whole buildings and small architectural details.
“I remember going to the hop exchange and drawing buetiful [beautiful] patterns.”
The pilot allowed Children & the Arts to work closely with the school to develop the project together and learn from the school’s feedback. The next step is to develop teaching materials and a project structure that could be made available to other schools and other areas of the UK at a later date.
A small public exhibition of the children’s work is planned for September 2008.
The ArchitectureQuest pilot was made possible by the kind generosity of The David Cock Foundation, Gardiner & Theobald and The London Eye.