The School for Creating Change helps people get involved in creating the change they want to see in the world.


Place Agency

Place Agency presents a series of conversations with 6 prominent Architectural practitioners and academics in Australia and the UK, considering the intersection between design, social value and the power of social connection.
Each episode presents a pair of conversation partners examining design’s capacity to elevate one of three themes; Social, Trust and Diversity.
The first three Social episodes comprise a CPD product for the Australian Institute of Architects, so be sure to check the AIA platform to answer your CPD questions after listening to have your points recorded
It has long been understood that the way we design and organize our living environments can help or hinder social connection. We know that at worst failed approaches can build in isolation- with long term damage to quality of life including physical and mental health outcomes. HOW we build refers not only to the built structure as an outcome, but also the process through which we arrive at that structure. The series highlights the importance of our agency in this through design’s capacity to be both a noun (an outcome) and a verb (a process).

A City for Whoo

Walking Tour / Workshop

A City for Whoo is proud to be part of the Come out Children’s Festival in 2015.come-out-2015-logo

City for whoo is an experiential urban walking trail to explore and discover how city spaces are created, for whom, by whom and how we all share in their ongoing reinvention and use.

Whilst walking on a curated trail through the city, participants enjoy carefully crafted place based activities and hear from a range of city users sharing personal narratives of their relationship with, and use of, the city. Embracing the city as an extended classroom, and interacting with places and city users on the ground, face to face, allows experiential learning to unfold through discovery, exploration and interaction in contexts that bring insights alive in fun and memorable ways.

Following the urban walking tour, a classroom based creative workshop provides a fun opportunity to further activate and extend participants understanding of how urban places are designed, and how design connects diverse groups of people. Activities in the workshop reflect actively upon the experiences encountered during the walking trail to explore the question of ‘who is the city for?’

A City for Whoo builds on previous School for Creating Change projects, working with children to consider the urban form of the city. This previous work is described by the following videos.

Shaping Space by Engagement from Office for Design + Architecture on Vimeo. Spaceshaper in Schools from Office for Design + Architecture on Vimeo.

NZ Urban Design Seminar 2014

From 22nd September 2014| Locations: Auckland , Napier, Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch

In this year’s NZIA  Urban Design Series accomplished practitioners from New Zealand and Australia will present their knowledge and experience on some important urban design topics.

Gayle Souter-Brown – Urban Design for Health and Well-being
Dr Angelique Edmonds – Social Sustainabiliy: Design that  connects people
Steve Thorne – Connected Places -The Case against Excusivity

To view the video preview click here.

AIA Seminar – Social Sustainability

About the Seminar:

REFUEL_CPD_FOR_2.0_Mono_BTSocial Sustainability is about ensuring the sustenance of the diverse social relations that exist in healthy communities. Creating the physical, cultural and social places that support wellbeing and a sense of community involves a process of engagement with the people who inhabit and frequent those places. For this reason good design, which promotes social sustainability and aspires to achieve the highest qualities in human relationships, is as much about process as it is about the outcome. The formal design of a physical place is critical, and sustaining good performance from that place over time, is best achieved when the design is integrated with the social infrastructure of the place.

Public policy in Australia and around the world has become increasingly interested in measures of progress that go beyond GDP. There is increasing interest and concern for the performance of public space, livability of cities and the wellbeing of a city’s inhabitants. This presents a great opportunity for Architects and built environment professionals, who are uniquely placed to steward the making, management and development of mechanisms to sustain places of thriving social connection in our cities.

This presentation by Dr Angelique Edmonds will discuss the growing public policy emphasis on wellbeing and performance of public spaces, how we can respond, what this means for innovation in design practice, who is involved in delivering Social Sustainability, why it is important, and what happens if we don’t.

Dr Angelique Edmonds was recently published in Architecture AU on the topic of Social sustainability. Click HERE for the article

To book a place visit the Australian Institute of Architects website