Children display radical vision for London flooded by climate change in ‘Imagining Tomorrow’ at V&A South Kensington
Top designers and teachers transformed classrooms into labs and helped children to conceive and visualise their ideas for tackling flooding, extreme heat and cold. The show highlights this creative collaboration.
Not for publication before: 00.01 Monday 24 June 2024
Flooded Highbury Fields conceived and visualised by the children of William Tyndale Primary School, London and interpreted by DaeWha Kang Design
HOW should clothes, food, buildings, landscapes, and neighbourhoods change in the face of rising sea levels, freezing temperatures and extreme heat? Hundreds of primary school children across England have been tackling these questions alongside professional designers, who are helping turn children’s classroom ideas into radical visions.
For the next six months, the V&A South Kensington’s Learning Centre is displaying some of the results of this unusual collaboration. Ideas on show in Imagining Tomorrow include a new urban landscape, conceived by young children, which represents a future London adapted to massive flooding that is anticipated in the capital.
The display features a selection of the ongoing work of the charity Climate Change All Change. It brings together top designers, educators, and environmentalists with primary schools. Together, they address a gap in primary education by integrating climate literacy and sustainable design into children’s learning.
Through a mix of photographs and reproductions of 2D designs, the display includes innovative work by 9-10-year-olds, guided by teachers, practicing designers, and CCAC advisers. It outlines the stages of the CCAC’s learning programme and culminates in the ‘Designer’s Reveal’, featuring visual, digital interpretations of children’s concepts designed to create a more sustainable world. (You can see examples here.)
David Lloyd Jones, a leading green architect and CCAC co-founder, said:
“Primary schools are a crucible for creative thought and action. Yet, climate literacy is not included in the national curriculum. Meanwhile, the UK’s reputation for design excellence is threatened because art and design teaching in schools has been eroded.
“CCAC aims to make climate and sustainable design education a standard component of the curriculum. We provide children with tools to understand the issues and means to envisage imaginative and effective accommodation of a turbulent and transformative climate future. CCAC’s programme allows children, teachers, and designers to understand the global threat and see how it can be transcended.”
Dr Helen Charman, Director of Young V&A, Learning and National Programmes at the V&A commented:
“Imagining Tomorrow is a timely reminder of how we must rethink the way we live. We know that climate change is on children’s minds and this display will inspire children to think about design solutions that help address the impact of climate change, which they are already seeing in their daily lives.”
Educators are keenly supporting the initiative. A teacher at one of the participating schools, Ashton Gate Primary School, Bristol said:
“The Climate Change All Change programme showed us that the children can learn new and complex skills and use teamwork to present their ideas back to adults. It showed us how mature and capable the children can be when they are given the right level of challenge.”
Imagining Tomorrow is at the John Lyon’s Gallery in V&A South Kensington’s Learning Centre, until January 2025. Entry is free.
Further information: www.cc-ac.org or contact Linda Lloyd Jones at linda@cc-ac.org or on 07500 108676.
Additional and higher resolution images can be provided on request.
Imagining Tomorrow, displayed at the John Lyon’s Gallery, V&A South Kensington
Xavier De Kestelier, Head of Design and Innovation at Hassell, working with children at Coppermill Primary School, Walthamstow