Reimagining Inside Spaces

Artists Filipa Pereira Stubbs and Caroline Wendling, supported by volunteer Amanda Morris-Drake, worked with the youngest three classes of Howard Primary School on the edge of Bury St Edmunds in November 2020. 

This was a school both new to our work but also emerging from a period of great organisational turbulence.  This year had also seen extensive disruption from Covid restrictions. The extensive empty spaces inside and out as well as this desire to try out doing things differently offered great opportunities for re-imagining and the school bravely embraced our plan to take over an empty classroom and to bring groups of children together from across different year groups. Small groups of children aged between 3 and 6 went out on adventures into the wide open fields that belong to the school and also, crucially, spent time together inside too, making work in a room the children decided to call The Making and Theatre Room. The floor and walls were covered with fresh paper and everyone was invited to move, draw and think freely in there.  

40 children were involved over the five days of the project, together with their educators Michelle, Lorraine, Julia, Kate, Marta and Leila. Our emphasis was on working with small numbers of children of mixed ages (from 3 to 6 year olds) to build this sense of collaboration and community. Whilst this did mean that each child only engaged directly in the project for five hours, the location of the room near to their classrooms allowed them to pop in to say hello and see the space evolve as they changed their shoes and got ready for home time.

It was striking to reflect together on the impact this space has had for the children but also all the adults. Here are just some of the observations made by the early years and KS1 team:

That encouragement you’ve given them to try things out and make their own suggestions has meant they’ve all  been so immersed into this exploratory space

I really liked how inclusive it was, this way of working with different age groups. Seeing the year 1 children be so kind and everyone helping each other. They weren’t competitive at all.

Showing the children their work is important to us. It’s so important for them to come and see their work still here. We  want to work here again with them but we need to ask them how we might move their work around. It is their space. It can be so hard for us as adults who are used to being in control. We need to remember that and step back – we must keep that ownership and identity that this is the children’s space

Howard Primary School is part of Anglian Learning.

Footnote: the school subsequently joined the eco-capabilities research programme. It has also opened one of Suffolk's first healing woods.