Opportunities For Change
All of us that work in education know what our schools, colleges and universities are like. We have a model in our heads about what they do and what they look and feel like. But as outlined in the Anticipation section, the current high level of activity in new builds is an opportunity to bring about fundamental change. Of course we need to be able to imagine what the results of that change might be. What are we trying to achieve? This is not an easy task as we tend to be focused on what is and what has been rather than what can be.
Edward De Bono expresses this well in the context of universities: 'The huge bulk of our intellectual resources are devoted to the past. This is almost the sole occupation of universities. By definition 'scholars' need something to be scholarly about and that means the past. Book review pages in the more worthy newspapers are at least three quarters filled with books about the past: biographies, period pieces, political memoirs, etc. This is hardly surprising. To write about the past you only need some skill as a writer: the past is there to described. To write about the future also needs some skill as thinker.'28
'Any new idea that does not raise a howl of protest is probably not a good idea. Those who are comfortable in the use of the old idea find it difficult to see the inadequacies of the old idea. If you have to imagine new benefits and you cannot achieve this effort of imagination, you have no choice except to resist the new.'
Edward De Bono, New Thinking for the New Millennium28
Whether you agree with De Bono or not there is no denying that when embarking on such a significant project as a new building or a major refurbishment then thinking outside the box that we are in (or perhaps even throwing the box away!) is a good idea at least at the outset. It is the 'skills as a thinker' that De Bono mentions that this section is concerned with. Each subsection below presents ideas or tools for thinking about the future and has the potential to help you have new ideas, describe them for others to understand and then maybe build them into your project. The importance of being future focused in developing the vision, and practical detail, of your project cannot be overemphasised. Whilst we do not know what the future holds we do have the opportunity to shape it through what we design, and we need to be bold about it.
Exploring some of the techniques considered here may help you develop those nascent ideas that you already have, but may not have clarified, and enable new ideas to emerge. You may also want to look at the section on Creativity in our Process Review infoKit.
