Gifted & Talented visit

In November 2006 we ran a visit for extremely able sixth form students from all over the UK as part of a one week intense, inspirational course brought together by Villiers Park Educational Trust. The course title is ‘The World in Crisis’. The aim of the visit to the Hockerton Housing Project was to provide an experience that anchored the whole course to the students own lives and to bring home how their daily lives will have to change in order for us to work towards a sustainable future.

The visit incuded a tour of the project, and a debate on ‘The Government has a duty to force individuals to lead a more sustainable lifestyle.’ Each student was assigned a role within ‘for’ and ‘against’ teams; such as: a politician, Friends of the Earth representative, Climate change expert,   Car industry representative, and a Representative of a human rights organisation.

After the visit specific feedback was collected from the students about the trip. During the general feedback session almost all of them said that the trip was one of the two highlights of the course.

Highlights of the visit

• Seeing inside the house
• Having roles in the debate
• Having their eyes opened
• The relaxed, everyday atmosphere
• Talking about the necessary compromises
• That you and Simon were not sanctimonious
• How adaptable you and Simon were
• The ‘overview of life’ given by the tour

Possible improvements (They struggled to come up with this list)

• A quick overview of the purposes and history of the project at the start
• A summary fact sheet about the project at the end
• They actually thought that you could be more assertive about possible changes in lifestyle, maybe ’10 things you could do’ at the end
• Meeting a teenager on the project
• All being crowded into the porch for a long time was claustrophobic (for the claustrophobic one)
• Warnings about the weird toilets would have been nice