As people’s social lives evolve, opportunities to go to Town Hall decrease and people start to disconnect from it. But it still plays an important role in our civic lives! The aim of the Town Hall in the Making project is to strengthen the connection between the people of Greater Manchester and the Town Hall and to promote it as a place of social interaction, for children and adults alike. What better way to do this than with a hands-on and artistic approach, when all generations can interact and learn together of the Mancunians’ architectural and social heritage. While the Town Hall is closed for renovation, it is the best way to discover it and understand what it means to a town. With this hands-on approach, we bring the Town Hall directly to the people.

The interactive workshops we will be preparing will be targeting young children between five and eleven years old (mostly primary school students): we need to adapt our workshop session plan and our teaching school to this young audience. To help us prepare as best as possible, we have requested the help of the STEM Ambassadors of the Science and Industry Museum of Manchester. They have experience in a STEM field and volunteer at the museum in order to convey to the younger generation their enthusiasm for their work. Therefore, in addition to being passionate in a STEM field, they are also able to spark interest in children, which is what we aim to do with the interactive workshops! During a forty-five-minute session with the ambassadors, we will be able to learn and ask questions about how to best engage and captivate the children during a hands-on workshop. Everything we will have learned during our interaction with the ambassadors will then help us to draw up an appropriate session plan for the workshops, and to adapt our language and attitudes towards the children. The aim is to give these children the best experience possible in learning about architecture, and how it combines, in this case, with civic life.