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Craig Stott: Faculti interview
Leeds School of Arts Architecture lecturer, Craig Scott, was interviewed by Faculti to discuss the pedagogic value of architectural co-design and how the role of Anchor Institutions can help fight societal inequalities caused by a decade of austerity.
Project Office co-director and Senior Architecture Lecturer Craig Stott has offered an insight into the social and political side of Leeds Beckett University’s in-house RIBA Chartered Architecture practice in an interview with Faculti.
Through the use of Live Projects, where community clients in need of architectural input receive a range of design solutions provided by students, architectural education institutions have the ability to provide support for non-profit organisations. The situated learning environment created through embedding architecture students in local communities can result in the empowerment of the external collaborators and non-profit organisations they represent through new learning, skill derivation, confidence and experience gained from participation in the co-design process.
Craig discusses how using the academic endeavour of students for the benefit of local communities is a process with social engagement at its heart, which has the potential to create systemic change by addressing the years of systematic dismantling of public investment under the guise of austerity from successive neo-liberal governments.
The approach is part of a larger movement where Anchor Institutions, a phrase coined by Universities UK, have the opportunity to promote economic, social and cultural regeneration by working with regional partners to bridge the pedagogic gap between practice and academia. Thus, the role of universities becomes one intent on advancing society for the greater good through the productive output of student endeavour, in addition to that classic creation and dispersion of knowledge.
Craig Stott
Craig Stott (MEng, BArch, MA, ARB) is a Project Office co-director, Architect and Senior Architecture Lecturer at the Leeds School of Architecture, Leeds Beckett University.