‘Reworlding’ education through immersive learning spaces.

Keywords: reworlding, paradigm shift, design thinking, future of schooling
Purpose: To share the vision, mission + capabilities as a design consultancy.
By 2050, if Australia doesn’t make important infrastructural and technological changes, we run the risk of falling behind global growth and advancement curves. Australia is currently ranked 20th¹ on the Global Innovation Index, behind countries like Israel, the US and Germany.
To achieve being ranked first, requires radically shifting our paradigm of learning, work, play, each other and the environment — we suggest there’s a need for ‘reworlding’ as described by Jeff Carreira².
And more specifically the need for reworlding education learning spaces, which is much more than flexible learning spaces.
It takes a pioneering team to achieve this paradigm shift. A team with not just experience and passion but also a new proven process and tools… to redesign our future schools. We need a new approach and believe the synergies between the founding members enables this to come to fruition.³
We know kids have it within them to create and learn. They’ve been using their role plays for millennia to prototype fantasy and futures without adult intervention. Role playing is something we do even as adults. (It’s the quickest and cheapest way to prototype many products and services.)
We’re concerned that both schooling, design, architecture and the technologies that support today’s schooling, stifle children’s creative and learning potential and therefore their creative confidence to develop a more intimate connection with their strengths and apply them to transform our world into a better place.
Australia is not the only place facing a downward change but we believe there is a great opportunity for Australia to start the reworlding education paradigm shift.
To deliver a paradigm shift worldwide we need to grow a generation of morally brave pioneers and change makers. That’s a generation with a voracious appetite for both exploring and being comfortable in the learning pit⁴ and reinventing for the common good. But how do you foster such a generation?
The way to achieve that is a holistic approach that not only envisions the future classroom but the future (pre)school — one that considers its entire community. We love the African saying “it takes a village to raise a child”?
We believe that everyone and everything interrelates in influencing the dramatic increase in children’s creative and learning potential. Posthuman children’s philosophy plays a role in this and we will explore this further in a later post.
The future (pre)school is no longer a centre of accepted knowledge funnelled from a higher authority who pretends to know what is factual. The future (pre)school is a place that believes that the vast majority of the world remains undiscovered and that knowledge continually evolves. Acting on that principle it wants to be a source of knowledge for the community.
This is the vision of the Magic Garden. We’re applying what we have learned to design whole school campuses and welcome you to join us on this exciting R&D journey. If you want to work with us please get in touch with either Nick — nickburnett@me.com or Krister — krister.designer@gmail.com.

