Every child matters

Writing and illustrating a design guide for future secondary schools with the Department for Education

This guide to future schools confronts the problems faced by poorly performing schools in major urban areas in order to propose radical solutions.

By envisaging multiple new schools in one location, it gives a practical and inspirational framework through which the design, construction and management of City Academies could evolve.

In September 2000, CABAL were asked by the DfEE to produce a draft design guide for City Academies, also to be seen as a prospective design document for all future secondary schools. Arranged in five sections entitled; Ethos, Resources, Siting, Accommodation and Structures of Care, the guide addresses the demanding conditions of manifold constituencies, showing people what these new schools might be like if unconstrained by precedent.

These drawings go to show a neighbourhood across the whole day, describing how the school, its constituency and infrastructure could develop from various kinds of co-operation between midnights.

This informal drawn and animated message allows an open-ended evolution of the ethos, resources, siting, accommodation and structures of care, to influence the successful composition of future schools in urban environments unbounded by the conventional delineations of a school day and a school fence.

Service: Creative Discipline

Location: UK

Client: Architects and Buildings Branch, DfE, SENJIT

Cost: £tbc

Dates: 2000

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