Ben Marston, Director at Jestico + Whiles, reflects on the Designing Inclusive Spaces webinar, exploring inclusive, sustainable designs for diverse student needs.

In the NLA Webinar on Designing Inclusive Spaces for Education we heard from five practitioners working in the sector both in the UK and overseas whose inclusive designs are helping to nurture the potential of all young people.  

Adam Davies, Principal & Sector Leader for Education & Science at Hassell joined from Australia. Adam shared some research Hassell have done around four key themes: 1) Be smarter and relive the campus; 2) Revive campus culture; 3) Widen the sustainability lens to inclusive design; 4) Create inclusive spaces for all, particularly working with First Nations people.  

Adam shared two projects:  UQ Student Central in Brisbane which has rethought how the university delivers softer services, making the provision of student services front and centre. He also discussed the masterplan for Queensland University’s campus, which has rethought how the campus can respond to First Nations people by introducing the concept of tracks through the campus and the narrative around them.  

Joyce Yazbeck is an Architect at LOM, and she shared the firm’s recently completed Point Blank Studios in Hoxton, a refurbishment project creating a boutique music studio in East London with a focus on inclusive design. An existing Victorian building was converted into a variety of performance rooms, rehearsal rooms and recording studios alongside support spaces.  

LOM managed to address the physical challenges of multiple level changes in the existing building with carefully positioned ramps. Given the nature of the facility there was considerable focus on acoustics throughout the design with inclusive features extending throughout, including height-adjustable DJ decks! 

Claire Barton from Haverstock spoke about the number of SEND children currently in the education system – 1.6 million – and how needs are increasing. Claire set the context: 1-in-6 children have some form of disability or neurodiversity. She shared some principals of inclusion:  dignity not deficit; greater complexity merits greater expertise; how difference and disability are normal aspects of SEND; different but not apart; children with a different learning need should be able to grow up together.  

Claire shared the practice’s Kentish Town Primary School, an exemplary piece of inclusive design and a reference point for many working in this sector, completed 10 years ago. It was conceived as a universal mainstream primary school. Claire explained how typically, a Specially Resourced Provision (SRP) is a pair of classrooms in one area of a school. The approach at Kentish Town, with the support of Camden Council, was to make the whole school inclusive by design, meaning that children can access the whole school, making it universal. Claire acknowledged this was expensive but described how they had recently revisited the school. The children there develop passion, understanding and empathy. They learn to support children with different needs but they don’t see them as different. It prepares them to be inclusive adults.  

Richard Grove, Senior Leader for Building & Acoustics at RWDI joined the conversation and spoke about the specific challenges of developing acoustics in schools. Richard discussed how there are no technical barriers to developing acoustics into designs, but more challenging is developing multi-use spaces within very tight environments.  

Richard talked about the importance of layout planning correctly so that acoustic separations are realistically achievable.  He explained how acoustics are not just about receiving information, but also how you perceive the environment, providing a range of spaces and translating from a user brief of human characteristics (buzzy, quiet or calm) into technical requirements.  

Joining the conversation, I reflected on some of the discussions we have been having on the NLA’s Expert Panel on Education. 90% of the 1.6 million SEND children are in mainstream schools. At a conference earlier in the year Andre Imrich from the Department for Education summarised the outlook in one word: “More.” On the Expert Panel we have heard that as there are more children with identified needs in the mainstream there is a shortage of space in existing schools to provide the facilities needed, and perhaps more importantly, most existing school environments are not effective for children with needs. There may be a special unit or suite of spaces but the main body of the school may not be suitably adapted for children with autism or disabilities.  

In our own work, we are seeing many new schools briefed with enhanced provision, typically a dedicated SRP unit, but not enhanced provision across a whole school, universal, as Claire described. I shared one story from our School Stories initiative, where to celebrate 100 Jestico + Whiles schools we have revisited a selection of them to hear directly from their communities. A student with multiple disabilities is thriving in a mainstream school, described by her mother as being regarded as a celebrity by her peers. This is possible largely because of the inclusive ethos of the school, but also because the entire school design was conceived around that inclusive ethos.  

In conversation, we discussed strategies to improve provision, such as sharing resources between schools and how masterplans can embed inclusive design thinking, the tangible benefits of going beyond the brief, and how the appointment of champions can hold authorities to account for the strategies that they have set.  

We also discussed the increasing awareness of neurodiversity in other sectors such as workplace, and how that can begin to inform thinking in education settings. Standards may be out-of-date in education compared to best practice more widely. We touched on a range of topics: from agility of space in adapting schools, to evolving needs and the challenges that hybrid learning presents in terms of accessibility to all.  

We concluded with something that was emphasised during the pandemic: the importance of schools and education institutions in their respective communities and the funding challenges they face, particularly in dealing with making spaces more inclusive.