Welcome to the first newsletter for Building Connections: Schools as Community Hubs! We are excited to share with you the team’s activity in the initial stages of the project. Our newsletter will be published every four months so make sure you subscribe to hear our latest news, events and research.

In this issue:

Project introduction
Building Connections website - now LIVE!
Call for papers: Schools as Community Hubs International Conference 2020
Welcoming new team members
Partner consultations
Research retreat November 2019
Meet the partners: ClarkeHopkinsClarke

Building connections between schools and communities

Building Connections: Schools as Community Hubs is an Australian Research Council Linkage Project investigating how best to plan, design, govern and manage schools to operate successfully as ‘more than a school’. The findings will support the education, health and wellbeing of individuals, families and community groups.

The project aims to provide policy guidance to help government and non-government school systems, local councils, schools and community organisations overcome obstacles that can limit community use of school facilities. Community use of schools could include sports and recreation, early years play groups or English language classes for new migrant families.

The project
will inform the cost-effective development
and use of school infrastructure for community benefit.

Building Connections website – now live

We are pleased to announce the launch of the Building Connections website! Through the site we will provide information on the project, its research and publications, and news and events.

You can also stay up to date with Building Connections news via LEaRN on Twitter: @LEaRNUnimelb.

Call for papers: Schools as Community Hubs International Conference, 4 December 2020

The Schools as Community Hubs International Conference explores the expanded roles of schools, investigating how schools may offer more to their communities – historically, currently, and in the future.

The conference organisers are particularly keen to hear from academics, graduate research students and industry professionals with an interest in the infrastructure requirements of schools as community hubs. School buildings and other infrastructure tend to be used sparingly outside of school hours, or are not designed for community use. Yet school sites are increasingly being recognised as valuable assets that can support the education, health and wellbeing of individuals, families and members of the wider community through the shared use of facilities. How such use can be offered and sustained over time is of particular interest.

More information and key dates

Welcoming new team members

Dr Sianan Healy

Dr Sianan Healy is Building Connections’ Project Coordinator. She provides research support, leads the dissemination of research findings and coordinates communication with partners and stakeholders. Sianan recently completed a research fellowship on histories of Aboriginal housing projects in post-war Victoria; prior to that she was research fellow and project manager on the ARC Discovery Project ‘Designing Australian Schools: A Spatial History of Innovation, Pedagogy and Social Change (University of Melbourne).

Philippa Chandler

Philippa (Pippa) Chandler is Building Connections’ Research Fellow. Philippa will lead the project’s primary research and work closely with the PhD candidates. Philippa is a member of the Institute of Australian Geographers and is particularly interested in how people ‘perform’ community in everyday Australian life. Her recent PhD explored place-attachment, community and environmental conflict among return visitors to the Ningaloo Reef region of Western Australia.

Phuong Nguyen

Phuong Nguyen is Research Communications Coordinator for LEaRN, supporting the network and its projects (including Building Connections) through research communication of the activities and findings of the group to broader audiences. Phuong has worked in multiple research support and communications roles across the University and has experience in project management, communications, event and website management. Phuong holds a Master of Development Studies, with a thesis exploring the social construction of childhood and child protection programs in and out of Vietnamese schools.

Partner consultations

From August to October, Ben Cleveland, Sianan Healy and Philippa Chandler met with the project partners in Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne. These initial consultations provided a fantastic opportunity for the project team to learn about the issues and objectives that are most pressing for organisations working in the field of community hub schools.

From these meetings some common themes are starting to emerge, including leadership continuity, communication, funding and partnership models. The conversations with teachers, hub leaders, principals and government stakeholders indicated a need for guidelines to inform consistent implementation of community hub initiatives linked to schools.

How to evaluate the benefits of community hub schools is another key focus for the project, as evidenced in conversations with people involved in developing and reporting on school–community relationships.

The trips included visits to schools that have implemented a formal school-community relationship. These visits gave insight into how diverse these relationships can be, from Yarrabilba Community and Family Place, co-located on the site of Yarrabilba State School in the Gold Coast hinterland, to Adelaide Botanic High School in Adelaide’s CBD. It is clear that responding to individual communities’ needs through a range of services and models, such as co-located, integrated, wrap-around or single-entry, is also crucial to community hub schools’ ongoing success.

Research retreat November 2019

In November, the project’s research team, Ben Cleveland, Clare Newton, Ian McShane, Janet Clinton, Philippa Chandler and Sianan Healy, together with Partner Investigators Simon and Laurence, retreated to the Yarra Valley in Victoria for a day of discussion and planning.

The intention of the retreat was to further develop the research plan towards achieving the project’s end goal, a development framework for schools as community hubs.

Meet the Partners: ClarkeHopkinsClarke

The project partners on an ARC Linkage Grant play a crucial role in providing government and industry insight and expertise and supporting the project financially.

Simon Le Nepvue, of ClarkeHopkinsClarke, is one of our Partner Investigators. Simon has been an architect of learning environments for 15 years and is one of only a handful in Australia with the internationally recognised Accredited Learning Environments ALEP qualification.

For Simon, the Building Connections project aligns with what he sees as his purpose and responsibility: designing spaces that will inspire passionate, lifelong learners.

‘We know schools designed as community can have enormous impact. This isn’t a distraction to the core business of education, but a driver. Building Connections will gather the evidence to prove it’.

This research is supported under Australian Research Council’s Linkage Projects funding scheme [LP170101050]. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Australian Research Council.

Partner organisations

Building Connections

Learning Environments Applied Research Network (LEaRN)
The University of Melbourne
VIC 3010 Australia
research.unimelb.edu.au/learnetwork/building-connections

CRICOS Provider Code: 00116k