We can work closely with your school or community group to help you build outdoor classrooms, shelters, composting toilets, a cob garden wall or bench, a kids hang-out made from household recycling, or anything else you can think of.

We will provide expert guidance, skilled labour, and sensitive leadership to guide your volunteers to create your home-grown space. Working with and involving the local communities promotes feelings of inclusiveness, teamwork and ownership.   The hands-on work promotes empowerment, fitness and a sense of achievement. Your volunteers will learn about the fundamentals of building materials and construction methods, with an emphasis on sustainability.

Director, Peter Lees has a background in the health sector, and has extensive experience working with children and adults with mental health and behavioural problems, learning disabilities, and many complex physical needs.

Our workshop is based on the site of Spectrum Active, where we work with clients with Learning Disabilities. The clients are involved at all stages of construction, and we support them to gain experience in a work environment.

Depending on the stage of construction and the materials being used, volunteers can be of all ages and capabilities. For schools, sessions can satisfy curriculum requirements, and longer-term academic projects can be based around the building projects. Academic projects could look at geometry, stresses and strains, levers, and directions of forces. Or you could research the origins and uses of different materials (wood, plastic, metal, glass, stone, clay, straw, lime etc), and their lifecycles.  Children can learn about embodied energy, ‘waste’ by-products (such as straw), recycling methods, and the scale of landfill problems. Whatever your ideas, we can help you to build your own space that you and your volunteers will feel a part of, and feel proud of.