Islington group visit to Islington Archives and Lizzie's last day

Project Officer Lizzie Edwards writes no her last day in the Building Exploratory office: 

Today is my final day at the Building Exploratory, and after two and a half years of being involved in fantastic projects exploring the built environment with a wonderful array of people and groups, what better way to finish than with a fascinating session with a brand new group for the Building Exploratory, which is going to grow and develop in the months to come!

The Building Exploratory have set up a new group to explore Islington’s history and architecture, with older people who live in the borough. Today we visited the Islington Local History Centre, which is in the Finsbury Library on St John Street, to get an overview of the history of the borough, which will frame our future building visits and talks. 

We were lucky to have a talk from Ben Smith, the Heritage Officer at the Local History Centre, who had opened the centre just for our visit and shared many fascinating insights onto the history of the borough. We were amazed to learn that the Local History Centre holds over twenty thousand images, and 1200 maps! We saw some really interesting examples of the archive, including many photos of St John Street through the years, maps from 1500, to Booth’s poverty maps, to bomb damage maps of the borough. We also saw the bomb damage record cards, which chart the streets and buildings that were affected during the war. 

I particularly enjoyed looking at the Vestry minute books, in thick leather and lock bound volumes, and hand written, detailing for example the days and times that cattle weren’t allowed to be driven through the streets, because they were disturbing the residents.

We hope to visit the archives again after we have had a chance to see a bit more of the architecture of the borough in person, so that we can learn more about the archival record of the buildings we visit. We’d also love to have a better chance to look at some of the amazing special collections at the archives, such at the Dove Brothers archive, who were prolific developers in the borough, and responsible for many of the buildings that characterize Islington today.

All at TBE wish Lizzie all the best in her new job - we will miss you! 

 

Free Film Making Workshop - Saturday 9th February

National Science and Engineering Week 2013

15th - 24th March - Book Now!

'National Science & Engineering Week shines the spotlight each March on how the sciences, technology, engineering and maths relate to our everyday lives, and helps to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers with fun and participative events and activities'

The Building Exploratory's fantastic science and engineering workshops are designed to engage your students with learning in exciting and interactive ways. 

All of workshops are linked to the national curriculum across a wide range of subject areas, from maths, science and design technology and geography. Our creative activities allow the students we work with to develop a range of skills including observation, spatial awareness, creative problem solving and critical thinking.

Call us now on 0207 6080 775 to discuss your workshop package for Science and Engineering Week. 

Workshops available: 

Building Bridges or Building the Stadium

In this workshop your class will learn about Forces in action as found in building and bridge construction. Children will gain an understanding of the crucial decisions engineers make when designing bridges and buildings and will learn how the interaction of forces determine which are the strongest shapes to use when building structures.  Working in teams, children participate in the Building Exploratory’s ‘bridge-building’ or ‘Olympic Stadium-building challenge.

Which team can apply their knowledge of forces to build the strongest structure?

Printing Planets

Reinforce your class’s learning from the Earth, Sun and Moon topic in this creative workshop. Children consider the features of each of the planets in the Solar System, and their relationship to the sun.  They discover the environmental and atmospheric conditions on the planets and learn how to represent them visually through mark-making, looking at the works of modern artists for inspiration. These new skills are then applied to making beautiful, ambient prints of the planets to display in your classroom.
 

Shelter: What from and what form? 

This workshop looks at natural features in a variety of environments and how a shelter can be constructed from locally-found materials.  Children work in project teams to agree the function of a shelter and how it will be designed and made.  Using model-making materials provided by the Building Exploratory, project teams build models of their shelters and present them to the class. 

Prices from as a little as £250 per workshop - Discounted packages available for multiple workshop bookings. Click here to contact us or call on 0207 6080 775