In this week’s seminar we have been deciding on what research methods would be best to use when thinking about our project on Chase Park. Using our current stakeholders we would like to do an interview with Alan on behalf of Friends of Chase Park to see what they want to get out of it, also an interview with Holly from Kick the Dust to get an understanding of how the secondary school students use the park and finally we want to do an activity with the children of Front Street Primary School to get their ideas on paper instead of making them sit through questions that they may be too shy to answer.
The activity with Front Street Primary School will be split up into smaller groups of around 4-6, with the activity lasting from an hour and a half to two hours. For a starter activity we want the children to draw the rough guidelines of the park, maybe noting down where they spend most of their time or what parts they miss out and forget about. After outlining the park, using stickers and colouring pens we want them to identify their favourite parts of the park. Having discussions after to engage the class and other ideas, writing these reasons why it’s their favourite area on post it notes. Then we want the children to use their imagination and scribble down ideas of how they want the park to improve or things they may want added, potentially incorporating activities they could do in the park as Friends of Chase Park seemed to be keen on the idea of having activities for the kids.
Hi team, good work on this. Your plan of action sounds realistic, fun and has a helpful distinction between present sense-making and future visioning. There are lots of different ideas you could add in to help stimulate discussion – could the Friends provide you with some photographs? Maybe some historical ones too? And how will you allow them to bring their ideas to life – would craft materials be useful here?
I would strongly suggest you prepare a session plan asap with clear times, roles, resources you need, if there is something you need me to lead on, etc. (like the example we gave you in the seminar). Email this through to me and Sebastian in advance of the seminar on Tuesday please. The session is an hour and a half so plan for this with some slack to introduce yourself, tidy up and a short plenary (how did you find it / what did you learn). Schools need to see this plan in advance too, so they know how to allocate their resources and so that they have trust in us to deliver the session.
Finally, just make sure that you don’t let the interviews slip in focusing on the school sessions – I would suggest fixing a couple of clear questions to ask Holly and the Friends at some point soon. Another stakeholder to possibly consider is a teacher at the school – if this interests you we can enquire about the possibility. Thank you and see you Tuesday 🙂
Hi team, thanks for this. Given time is short, and the mid-term presentation is coming up on the 6th March, consider grouping into sub-teams. You do not all need to work on the same thing. Perhaps agree on questions together and consider having two of you arrange & complete the chat with Alan / Holly; and two of you focus on the workshop activity. Seconding Sean here with regard to the plan for the workshop — don’t leave this too late; keep us in the loop with regard to any help you need.