Claiming events of school (re)design: materialising the promise of Building Schools for the Future

Abstract

This paper focuses upon a major, ‘flagship’ programme of investment in school building (re)development instigated by the UK New Labour Government between 2004 and 2010: Building Schools for the Future (BSF). Drawing upon empirical material from research in two schools which were undergoing refurbishment in this policy context, we explore how BSF was manifest, in practice, as an event characterised by the promise of transformation. We focus upon two particular school buildings, highlighting how this promise came to be attached, not unproblematically, to the redesign of diverse material school spaces, be they small and ‘functional’ (e.g. corridors) or high-profile and ‘inspirational’ (e.g. flagship atria).

Cet articule se concentre sur un programme important, ‘vedette’ d'investissement dans le (re)développement de la construction des écoles engagé par le gouvernement du Royaume-Uni: Construire des Écoles pour Demain (Building Schools for the Future, BSF). En utilisant des matériaux empiriques des recherches dans deux écoles qui subissent une rénovation dans ce contexte politique, nous explorons comment BSF est manifeste, en pratique, d'un événement caractérisé par la promesse de transformation. Nous nous focalisons sur deux bâtiments d'écoles, soulignant comment cette promesse eût attaché, non dépourvue de tout problème, à la transformation des espaces matériels divers des écoles, qu'elles soient petites et ‘fonctionnelles’ (p. ex. couloirs) ou bien en vues et ‘inspirantes’ (p. ex. atriums vedettes).

Este papel se enfoca en un programa muy importante del (re)desarrollo de escuelas, invertido por el gobierno del Reino Unido: Construyendo Escuelas por el Futuro (Building Schools for the Future, BSF). Utilizando materiales empíricos de investigaciones hechos en dos escuelas en el proceso de renovación en esto contexto político, exploramos como la práctica de BSF está manifestado como un evento caracterizado por el proceso de transformación. Enfocamos en dos edificios escolares en particular, destacando como esta promesa llegó a estar amarrado al rediseño espacios escolares de materiales diversos, ya sean pequeños y ‘funcionales’ (pasillos) o prominentes y ‘inpriacionales’ (flagship atria).

Keywords:

• school
• Building Schools for the Future
• promise
• design
• materiality
• policy

Keywords:

• écoles
• Construire des Écoles pour Demain (Building Schools for the Future)
• promesse
• agencement
• matérialité
• politique

Keywords:

• escuela
• Construyendo Escuelas por el Futuro (Building Schools for the Future)
• promesa
• diseño
• materialidad
• política

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council/Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council ‘Designing for the 21st Century’ programme (grant number AH/E507026/1). Thanks are due to Andrée Woodcock who led this research project, and Michelle Newman and Matthew Kinross who were co-investigators. Thanks also go to Phil Hubbard and three anonymous referees for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes

1 The Department for Education and Skills, the UK government department charged with policy-making regarding education at all levels, and for broader policy-making for young people was replaced by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) in June 2007.

2 In UK nomenclature, ‘primary’ education typically refers to the education of 3–11-year-olds.

3 The BSF programme was launched in 2004 and was of fundamental importance within UK educational policy and school-building discourses/practices until May 2010 when the programme was abruptly scrapped following a change of government.

4 In UK nomenclature, ‘secondary’ education typically refers to the education of 11–18-year-olds.

5 For details of the project, see this paper's acknowledgements.

6 All interviews were transcribed verbatim and subject to coding and content analysis via the qualitative analysis software NVivo.

7 For these ostensibly methodological reasons, we prefer Jacobs' (specifically architectural) conception of the ‘event’ to other theorisations of the event currently being mapped out by human geographers (Bassett 2008; Dewsbury 2007). Moreover, the sweeping, widespread, purportedly radical nature of BSF was a policy event operating at a knowingly brutal scale and speed—a scale and speed that was discordant with the kinds of unpredictable, self-founded, contingent and evental sites of alterity inspired by Deleuze and Badiou (Marston, Jones and Woodward 2005).

8 Readers interested in viewing these photographs can access the pdf of this publication free-of-charge, at http://publications.teachernet.gov.uk/default.aspx?PageFunction = productdetails&PageMode = publications&ProductId = DfES+1140%2F2004&.