Kids

The city in which we live is an incredible place to explore, and yet many young people's boundaries do not extend outside their local neighbourhood. Our programmes awaken young people's creative potential, and show how the city is a place that can inspire and widen horizons.

Each programme also develops team work and communication ability - skills which transfer directly into other parts of their lives.

Archikids Festival is Open-City's flagship architecture festival for children in May 2013, following the success of the pilot event Junior Open House Festival. It will be a three day festival aimed to excite and engage young people on the value of architecture and their city.The Festival in 2012 was our city’s first ever free and inspiring children’s architecture festival and took place on 23 & 24 June 2012. The weekend event saw over 2,100 children, and their families, exploring the architecture of the City of London’s Square Mile by participating in the festival’s 124 architectural activities, tours and workshops.

My City Too is a citywide campaign, launched in 2007, to enable young people to voice their ideas, aspirations and solutions for the future of London. Forums, peer-to-peer surveys, a major mayoral debate and local community engagement projects allow young people to directly influence change. We have also developed a youth leadership programme which enables young people to carry out workshops in their schools to groups of their peers giving them an introduction to the built environment, design, planning and model-making.

Junior Open House is our mini festival of workshops and family events, held during the Open House London Weekend, aimed specifically at inspiring young people about the architecture of their city.

The Archikids Club is an exciting virtual club for children aged 4 to 12 who want to explore the world of architecture year-round. It’s online, interactive and full of activities to help investigate and understand the built environment. Visit archikids.org.uk to sign up!

Summer Architecture Academy is a series of creative explorations and workshops held over four days each summer to investigate how cities are designed and built. Teams of young people, built environment professionals, architecture students, and Open-City Educators come together to design and model on a super scale, a new urban quarter in the heart of London, testing out life-size structures, model-making techniques and mapping along the way.

 

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