Over 300 municipal leaders study at the LSE through the Urban95 Academy residence week
This week marks the 10th cohort of the Urban95 Academy residence week. In the past 5-years the programme has brought over 300 urban leaders representing 100 city teams from all over the world to London to study at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
29 urban officials from 10 cities arrived in London to take part in five days of intensive in-person teaching, workshops and site visits during the week-long residence in central London.
The current cohort joins a growing network of more than 300 urban leaders who have participated in the London residence week and over 1500 urban leaders who have joined the online course since the programme began in 2021.
Each of the cities were invited to participate in the immersive in-person learning experience based on their successful completion of the online component of the Urban95 Academy and submission of proposals to solve a local challenge related to the experiences of young children and cities in their municipality.
The Academy is an example of how bringing together academia, philanthropy and local governments can be a powerful mechanism to build capacity in urban leaders to embed early childhood as a priority for urban design and policy.
“We filled a unique niche integrating early childhood development into urban planning, bringing unusual suspects to the mission of improving young children’s lives. The Urban95 Academy emerged as a solution to a growing demand from cities, scaling through learning.” Says Andrea Torres, Director of Support and Learning, at the Van Leer Foundation
Each team arrived in London prepared to develop a solution with the ambition of making their city a better place for babies, toddlers and their caregivers.
The City of Canning, Australia is developing a plan to make their city centre a more livable place for families. In Ndola, Zambia the team is developing strategies to provide proximate childcare to support caregivers who bring children to work in market stalls. In Brasilia, Brazil and Envigado, Colombia, teams are working to bring more nature-based solutions into school yards and urban play spaces. In the City of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina the team are envisioning a city delivering safe routes for strollers and comfortable spaces for caregivers to stay and rest. Here in London, the Borough of Camden has an ambition to deliver safe and accessible doorstep play and a team representing the Greater London Authority (GLA) are thinking about how more child-friendly projects and policies at the city level can address the trend of families with young children leaving London. From the City of Oshawa, Canada, the team aims to ensure that high density areas allow for all children to have access to services. The 1803 Fund from Portland, Oregon is working to close the learning and achievement gap for low-income children through a redevelopment project in the city’s Albina Neighbourhood. And in Sanliurfa, Turkey, the team is developing strategies to mitigate impacts of extreme heat on children in the city.
The residence week programme took the themes from the Academy’s 7-week online course off the screen and into the city of London, where the learning environment proved as influential as the knowledge content.
A walking tour through London’s East End took participants through a day in the life of a caregiver. Starting by pushing a stroller and carrying rice bag “babies” on public transportation, participants arrived at Wentworth Nursery a state-maintained child and family centre and nursery school that has been serving the local community for 75 years to see how the school has transformed the outdoor space into a natural play area rich with opportunities for independence and learning such as a pond, mature trees, sand, loose parts and challenging climbing frames.
Next, the group visited London’s oldest park Victoria Park in the borough of Tower Hamlets. Author and play advocate Tim Gill, took participants to Pools Playground home to three towering mound slides for a talk on the benefits of risky play opportunities for children. Then the group was joined by Rosamund Kissi Debrah, the founder of the Ella Roberta Foundation and a prominent advocate and campaigner for clean air.
The tour continued with Liza Fior, co-founder of Muf Architecture Art who led participants to a small-scale urban realm project entitled Street Interrupted, where a section of road in Hackney Wick was permanently closed to car traffic and redesigned with a tree planted in the middle of it with a variety of small invitations of play and seating integrated into the design. Finally, the tour continued to the Olympic park and wider redevelopment area in Stratford where participants saw Tumbling Bay Playground and Chobham Mannor, a family-friendly housing development designed with access to communal play spaces on the doorstep.
Back at the LSE campus, in-person campaign building and media training, and a behaviour change workshop helped the city leaders rethink how to approach their local challenges – enabling them to bring in fresh ideas and different perspectives, changing their mindsets on how to best tackle the issues they face at home.
Now graduates of the course return to their municipalities and will embark on a six-month technical assistance partnership based on their challenges from leading organisations such as Arup, GDCI, Superpool, Gehl and Qendra Marrëdhënie. City teams leave London with more tools, knowledge and connections to continue the work of improving their local urban environment for young children and care givers.
For more information on how to get involved in the Urban95 Academy visit urban95academy.org.
