Live projects impact review & project office pilot study for the school of architecture & environment

Burch, James; Grigoriadou, Eirini; Wigmore, Georgia; Jones, Matthew

Abstract

This project collected and reviewed the Architecture & Built Environment Department’s legacy of community engagement in architectural and urban live project work from 2012 to 2024 – as recorded and disseminated in the School’s Hand-On Bristol initiative along with Agency Project and studio curricula. This impact study found that, at a conservative estimate across the past 12-years within the school of architecture, approximately 1100 students have committed at least 82,000-hours of time to community clients’ architectural and urban projects. Structured interviews were carried out with four long-standing clients that confirmed the school’s role as a creative catalyst across a range of communities, offering and articulating community representation &/or a resource for neighbourhood planning & local government, and providing architectural services in support of local creative arts and many individual charities.
In parallel the project convened a student consultancy pilot across the summer of 2024 to explore the scope and identity of a newly proposed Project Office within UWE’s School of Architecture & Environment. This ‘pop-up’ Project Office for five interns executed ‘exemplar projects’ that demonstrated the range of project types, specialisms, and collaborative relationships a School Project Office could manage that would be different to and enhance the Live Project and community engaged architectural work currently delivered within the curriculum. From the interns’ perspective this Project Office was valued this experience as a real and physical office within which they could collaborate, share working practices and were supported in learning professional practice skills. An analysis of the project outcomes showed that all the Project Office’s work delivered with reference to Knowledge Exchange Framework Metrics.
Building on this research and consultancy the study proposes a model for a dual-functioning Bureau/Office that acts as a bridge across the School’s Student Experience and Knowledge Exchange with the aim of advancing both these objectives. This Office would act as a ‘Bureau’ for exchanging knowledge across and beyond the School, facilitating transactions across the School of Architecture & Environment between research groups, teaching, students and their societies, and communities across the city region; and focussing on delivery for the KEF Metric for ‘Supporting the Community/Public Engagement’ for the School. As a workplace it would implement projects through paid internships at physical ‘pop-up’ Project ‘Offices

• Report Type: Project Report
• Deposit Date: Jan 22, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 22, 2025
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/13635354