Session 5: Inclusive Learning Spaces

Synopsis

Adapting HCD for SEN and putting it into practice 

Speakers: Lucy Greenland, Project Architect & Simon Kneafsey, Associate Director, Atkins

How do we broaden the engagement process to ensure it is inclusive of all users of a building, particularly those with special educational needs? How are we able to utilise digital tools to capture meaningful data from SEN staff/pupils to ensure their specific needs are acknowledged and integrated as part of the brief and ultimately building?

Atkins’ Human-Centred Design Toolkit is an innovative tool with the aim of improving peoples’ wellbeing by placing the users at the heart of our thinking at both a macro and micro scale.

Together with the National Autistic Society we are researching and exploring how we develop our HCD toolkit to become fully inclusive of all users. This includes direct engagement with both SEN pupils and their supporting staff to gain an in depth understanding of their specific needs and how this information can be captured in both the brief and design of their future environment.

Key aspects of our work include:
– Establishing tailored SEN questions to collect meaningful data from end users.
– Exploring the integration of established SEN communication methods into our briefing/engagement tool such as ‘Picture Exchange Communications Systems’ (PECS).
– Establishing the most important parameters/wellbeing indicators for SEN such as sensory requirements (i.e. Hyper/Hyposensitivity), wellbeing (i.e. anxiety and processing/sequencing of information) and flexibility (i.e. to accommodate for the diversity in SEN needs).
– Exploring innovative analysis methods which ensure that qualities of an environment which are important to those with SEN become an integral part of our design option analysis.

Case Study: The use of the SEN HCD Digital tool in the development of a brief for a new all through school for Pembrokeshire County Council

Inclusive Design: Basic Principles and exciting opportunities

Speaker: Victoria Savage, Architect, IBI Group

Teachers today have to prepare lessons inclusive of a broad reaching spectrum of learning difficulties. And that’s just in mainstream schools! Ask any specialised SEN teacher how many different learning needs their students might have in any given sample of class and it is unlikely to be a short answer. Combined with the growing list of acronyms and politically correct vocabulary, teaching special educational needs could feel like a minefield, let alone attempting to design with SEN in mind. What impact could we as designers have in this ever changing and ever evolving sphere?

Questions and discussions will cover:
1. Knowing your client, your user group, your USP.
2. Working collaboratively, consistently and carefully.
3. Pushing for creative solutions and innovative options even within the age-old constraints of budget and programme.