Over the past few months co-owners Aoife Gilchrist, Sioned Holland and Kim Huynh have had the privilege of working with a local primary school through Open City’s Young City Makers programme. The initiative aims to inspire year 5 students to engage with the built environment and think critically about how it shapes their communities, through a series of workshops and a city trip.

In the first workshop, we invited the students to reflect on their neighbourhoods. Together, we discussed their likes and dislikes, shared personal experiences, and explored ways in which their local areas could be improved to benefit the wider community. The students came up with an array of thoughtful and creative ideas, such as community first-aid boxes hanging from trees—allowing anyone to grab a plaster if they scraped their knee on the way to school!

The second workshop was a city trip to Neasden Mandir, a Hindu temple in northwest London. Here, the students learned about how the building acted as a central hub in the community, bringing people together. Exploring the temple’s craftsmanship and intricate marble carvings providing great inspiration for the final workshop where students applied what they had learned to create models of their neighbourhood.

During the final workshop, the class came together to design, create, and construct a shared vision for an improved Greenwich Peninsula. Working in groups, the students spent time sharing and refining ideas before delegating the building tasks. While some focused on constructing the larger structures, others poured their energy into creating intricate details. They showed fantastic teamwork and problem-solving skills, particularly when challenges arose, with creative structural reinforcements sometimes needed to bring their visions to life! Their proposals included:

• Super-fast transport capsules, connecting every corner of the UK

• ‘The Edible School’

• Community housing with shared leisure spaces

• ‘The Leaning Leisure Centre’ tower

• Treehouse playgrounds in the sky

• A complex network of public river tunnels and bridges snaking around the Thames

  
  

At the end of the session, all the models were connected together, and the lights were switched on to reveal their lively and vibrant neighbourhood.

The programme culminated in the Young City Makers Awards Ceremony, where hundreds of Year 5 students from across London were celebrated for their creative visions of the future, from rollercoaster transport systems to sustainable city farms. Each student received a ‘key to the city’ medal, and Christchurch School received one of the Imagination Prizes for the reimagining of Greenwich peninsula!

During the ceremony, students shared their reflections on the programme – a memorable quote from one student, 

“I thought architects just designed buildings, but I’ve learned that they also design communities and bring people together.”

We have been truly inspired by the students’ innovative ideas for equitable neighbourhoods and the enthusiasm they brought to each workshop. We’re excited to continue contributing to these programmes and supporting the next generation of young city makers!

For more information on Young City Makers, check out their website:

https://open-city.org.uk/young-city-makers