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Cymraeg

‘Reflective Cities, Creative Mindsets’: Igniting Young People’s Creativity and Engagement with the Built Environment


  • CalendarMonday 15 September 2025
  • Clock outline10:00 - 17:00
  • Audience: UsersOpen to the public and staff
  • Booking: TicketThis event is free

This event brings together a number of aspiring design academics and practitioners with notable experience in engaging children and young adults through creative methods with the built environment, to share their experience, expand their networks and forge new research and practice alliances.

The list of contributors includes individuals representing: The London School of Architecture, V&A Museum (Young V&A), the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Youth Engagement Service, Social Life and Birmingham City University, MATT+FIONA, The National Gallery, Urban Learners, Bath Spa University, Architecture for Kids CiC, Cardiff University’s Welsh School of Architecture and the School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, and Thornton Education Trust.

Summary of key themes and objectives:
The ‘Reflective Cities, Creative Mindsets’ symposium rekindles a reflective, critical and purposeful dialogue among architectural educators and practitioners who specialise in engaging children and young adults with their built environment through creative practices.
The event aims to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and experience on goals, tools and creative processes, to enrich a community of researchers and professionals driven by similar values and interests, willing to push boundaries and test new creative practices and modes of public engagement.
To instigate a familiar, safe but also unfamiliar and thought-provoking dialogue, the symposium is organised around the three creative and thematic modes of Making, Thinking, and Dwelling.
Making opens a round table discussion on creative workshops that support participatory design of/in live projects.
Thinking gathers expertise on creative practices that support reflective and critical interpretations of the built environment.
Dwelling invites guest speakers to reflect on intuitive and creative ways of inhabiting, questioning and exploring our cities.
Mirroring and distorting well-established academic interpretations of creativity (making, thinking, dwelling), we will question the themes’ boundaries and discuss creativity as a non-linear, unpredictable and collective process.

The Reflective Cities, Creative Mindsets project is led by the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University and is funded by the Ignite: Small Grant Awards of the Wellcome Trust. The one-day symposium is co-organised with Architecture for Kids CiC, the Thornton Education Trust, and the Building Centre, three project partners renowned for their focus on educating and engaging children and young people, and for fostering their agency in the built environment.

This event has now reached its maximum capacity. Unfortunately, we cannot facilitate the attendance of any additional participants.

 

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  • Building Centre
  • 26 Store St
  • London
  • WC1E 7BT

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