Wonder-ful Schools?

This episode – led by designer and activist Mary Featherston with teaching staff from Princes Hill Primary School – seeks to convey the essence of the ‘collective inquiry’ educational approach. Working with a filmmaker, students travel to Mary’s atelier and garden where they will undertake a studio-based learning experience. The children are invited to explore Mary’s life-long collection of natural objects – her personal ‘cabinet of curiosities’. On returning to Design Hub, the children discuss and unfold their experiences. Children and adults gather around Design Hub’s purpose-designed ‘round table’ to discuss what this experience has meant to them, what sparked their sense of wonder and curiosity, what they find interesting and what are their passions. They explore how they pursue their own interests and how they can entice others to explore with them. In this way, the episode seeks to reveal how people like to learn.

Mary Featherston is an interior designer specialising in the design of physical environments for learning in schools and cultural institutions. The focus of her research and practice is the relationship between contemporary progressive pedagogy and design of the physical environment. In 1965, Mary formed a partnership with Australian designer Grant Featherston (1922–1995). Their collaborative design work resulted in a number of awards and them being inaugural inductees into the Design Institute of Australia’s Hall of Fame. In 1967, Mary and Grant commissioned a house and studio by architect Robin Boyd – Featherston House – which she shares with her family today. Her work has been awarded and published nationally and internationally. Mary helped to establish Community Child Care in 1973, Melbourne Children’s Museum in 1985 and the Reggio Emilia Australia Information Exchange in 1995. She is a Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne and an emeritus director of the Robin Boyd Foundation.

EPISODE SCHEDULE

12:30 – 2:30PM
ROUND TABLE
with Esme Capp, Mary Featherston, Hannah Rother-Gelder and Princes Hill Primary School students

3 – 4PM
REFLECTIVE DISCUSSION
Envisaging new paradigms for education
with Suzie Attiwill, Esme Capp, Mary Featherston, Natalie Robinson, Hannah Rother-Gelder and Fleur Watson

This episode is part of WORKAROUND.

WORKAROUND engages with a movement of women focused on advocacy and activism within an expanded field of architecture. Each of these practitioners works towards positive change in the built environment and its surrounding cultures. WORKAROUND is an online broadcast and a program of live events. Across fourteen daily episodes, fourteen Australian practitioners each present a critique, conversation, interview, workshop or performance that articulates their strategies and workarounds and reflects on their activist practice.

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Image courtesy of Mary Featherston