Key Stage 4
Art, English, ICT and Maths
National Maritime Museum in partnership with Kidbrooke School and Arts College.
The teacher wanted to increase student:
- engagement with the learning process
- team working skills
- understanding of the local built environment
Engaging Places exhibition, Wolverhampton © CABE
Kidbrooke School and Arts College, in south London, worked with the National Maritime Museum to make a youth-friendly map of the Greenwich world heritage site. The aim was to encourage other young people to discover the area.
Greenwich presented a special challenge. The place is so dense with historical associations, and the built environment is so complex and impressive, it could almost become overwhelming. How do you decide what is most important? As the project developed the students created a clearer picture of what interested them, and therefore what would interest their peers. Moving away from some of the traditional landmarks they began to explore the ghost stories and the subterranean tunnels. They also began to research the work of artists such as Grayson Perry who have explored the possibilities that maps present.
The story of this project is the story of the students’ increasing control over the material. The contrast between the first and second visits into Greenwich illustrates this very well. During the first visit they had the time to soak up more and more information and to let the place direct their interest. But on the second visit, with less time available to them, the students began to take control of re-imagining the place in virtual form. The final refinement of the students’ ideas was a map showing their own interpretation of Greenwich.
