The Chippindale Venture - TrustNews August 1989
As many of you will know Frank Chippindale died at the beginning of last year after a long retirement. At least Frank called it retirement but he spent much time vigorously educating young and old people alike about their built environment. It appeared to me to be a full-time job preparing for lectures, articles, being concerned about planning matters and so on.
Frank was particularly concerned that the school age generation should be more aware of their inheritance and the importance of the built environment to their own and to other people's well-being.
The Urban Studies Group, on behalf of the Trust, decided to mark Frank Chippindale's contribution to education by a project that reflected some of his educational ideals. The project has been named the Chippindale Venture.
This year's Chippindale Venture is to be a pilot scheme involving 40 eleven year old children from two Winchester schools, All Saints and Western Road Primary. They will be set an exercise to consider, prepare and present ideas for a new Visitors' Centre on an important site within the City. The children will be divided into ten teams, each team will be led by an architect who will be available to guide and help their deliberations. The projects will be presented to planning officers and elected members along the lines of a Planning Application procedure for the Hampshire County Council. The site will be the area between the Law Courts and Hampshire County Architects' Department.
By this process, it is hoped that the children will become aware of the history of the site, the existing materials, spaces, forms and all those ingredients which should come under consideration when a potential building site is evaluated. They will also be made aware of the democratic procedures that are involved as well.
In order to help their consideration of the site, an exhibition is being arranged in the Heritage Centre from 2nd October, directing their attention towards the important elements that make up the built environment of the area concerned.
The presentation day is to be held on 20th October in the Hampshire County Council's Committee Room. There will be an opportunity to see the finished results, together with the contextural background information at the Heritage Centre for three weeks beginning on 23rd October and thereafter for a further three weeks at the Teacher Centre.
You will have no doubt noticed that I termed this a pilot scheme, the idea being that we will learn a great deal from running such an event with one classroom of eleven year old children. It is of course hoped that it will be a success for the children and the Preservation Trust. If it is, then the idea is to open the scheme to older children who could use it in their GCSE curriculum. However, we are not proposing to forecast our intentions too far ahead until we know the full amount of work involved and the help and finance we are likely to attract.
Finally, I should like to thank all those who have so far both given their encouragement and time to this project; members of the Urban Studies Committee and particularly Dot Browning who has been a tower of strength, Geof Dinkele of Hampshire County Council's Education Department, Debbie Kerr of Western Road Primary School, and Pam Turner of All Saints, Winchester.
We set out for your interest a resume of some of the information prepared for the children. We have tried to be as simple and as uncomplicated as we can in our directions, when we know that any site in Winchester is anything but simple and uncomplicated!
| Site: | Area between the Law Courts and Hampshire County Architects' Department. |
| Site History given. | |
| Client: | Hampshire County Council |
| Schools | All Saints, Winchester |
| taking part: | Western Road Primary |
| Brief: | Preparation of scheme commences first week in October. |
| Architectural brief provided. | |
| Presentation of scheme: |
October 20th, 1989 |
| Exhibition: | Contextural Exhibtion (2nd/20th October) Contextural Exhibition & Schemes (23rd October/ 10th November) |