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The fifth in a series of articles looking at the work of Creative Partnerships around the country; this issue looks at how the experience of professional designers can impact on learning and the learning environment.

Visual artist Lothar Götz has been working on an innovative Creative Partnerships project with staff and pupils at Westlea Primary School, County Durham, to create an inspiring communal entrance area for the school.

Using blocks of colour and often dividing walls into bands and grids, Löthar devises individual colour schemes to accentuate the particular characteristics of the buildings he works with. Here he describes how he used design to explore how colour and space can make a real difference to the learning environment.

In March 2004 I made my first visit to Westlea Primary School. My first impression of the building was dominated by a kind of a post-war aesthetic, something left over from the sixties or seventies, remembering my own childhood. The building looked like it was meant to be temporary, but for some reason was still there. In addition, the school had a contemporary extension that showed ambitious ideas but unfortunately insufficient funding had not made every idea possible.

To the left of the entrance was the old part, to the right the new (with the new sports hall). The seam, which joined both parts together, went through the entrance area and formed the new main artery of the building. It was as busy as Charing Cross Station between entrance, office, staffroom, classrooms and sports hall.

Light was a great issue for the school, especially as the original architects had sacrificed the window in the sports hall. In the art room there were French doors - but they couldn?t be opened! The teachers expressed their disappointment at not being able to open up the art room and move some of the activity into the courtyard. The cheapness of the building materials was quite shocking to me ? especially when one thinks of all the luxury apartment developments around the area.

But I liked the school. I started looking around for a possible location for an intervention. It was not an easy task. There was no space for an artwork in the classic sense ? it was a primary school, not a gallery. Yet the atmosphere in the building was sympathetic ? feeling a bit like a Portakabin: something temporary designed for a temporary period in the life of the children.

A few weeks later I was back in the school ? more familiar with the place and equipped with my sketchbook and open eyes. Everybody seemed excited, the buzz and routine of the place was something I was getting used to. Phases of extreme activity alternated with the quietness in the corridors when activity moved to classrooms. The first suggestion from the teachers was to do a piece in the sports hall ? probably to make up for the missing window. But, of course, no colour can replace sunlight.

All morning I sketched in the hall, much to the amusement of the children. I had completely forgotten how much creative excitement a disturbance within a routine can cause. The children wanted to know everything and within minutes I was under siege. The interest and response of the children excited me and made me very happy.

The social role of the building as a school became fascinating and my activity moved towards a ?colour-for-the-kids? thing. Quite soon the sports hall turned out not to be an ideal place for a colour intervention. I found that I preferred the rawness of the breezeblocks and the concrete. Colour would have rather spoiled it.

After more wondering and wandering around I located the entrance hall with the adjacent corridor towards the staffroom as a possible space for a colour intervention. This space linked the extension to the existing building ? acting as one of the main activity areas. It was a kind of ?threshold?, where authorities changed: children became ?schoolchildren? and adults became ?teachers?.

Head teacher Kevin Duke?s office had a glass window onto the corridor, I planned to include this in the colour scheme ? so that everybody behind the glass in the office would be framed through the colour. Around a corner was a narrow corridor leading to the staffroom and toilets. The activity here was mainly the teachers coming for tea, lunch or other breaks. The idea was to bring the entrance, main hall and the corridor together through different colours ? whereby only the walls of the old part of the school would be painted.

I decided to give every area two distinct colours, which met exactly halfway between floor and ceiling and occupied all the wall space. The colours changed according to the partitioning of the space. In theory, the whole thing would be a giant painting, layered over certain walls of the school. The colours I chose were bright and always appeared in a pair. The children walk through the painting on their way between entrance, sports hall and classrooms - constantly interacting with the background and changing the three dimensional painting with their faces and school uniforms.

Lothar Götz is Senior Lecturer at the University of Sunderland