Given the state of the world in 2020, we started our academic year somewhat hesitantly, unsure where the journey would lead.  Looking back, our first event, befittingly, was our calendar fixture at ISF Academy, our UrbanPlan-HK pilot school.

The prospect of conducting a student workshop during a pandemic was daunting, to say the least.  Much to our relief, we were able to run our usual full-day program – albeit, with health precautions and social distancing.  Our guarded optimism was tested when the HK Education Bureau ordered schools back into home-based learning shortly thereafter. Like so many the world over, we were left wondering: “Now what?”

As a response to the new ‘pandemic normal’, UrbanPlan in the Americas and Europe had already begun to experiment with a virtual or hybrid format.  Ultimately, we concluded that in-person, hands-on engagement was vital for students’ experience and in particular, for the Asia High-Density model of UrbanPlan.

When schools finally resumed in-person, classes were reduced to half-day schedules, which meant that UrbanPlan needed to adapt to a shorter workshop day. This necessitated decanting important background information into a series of pre-workshop lessons. We, therefore, developed simple, engaging collaterals to allow any host school’s teaching staff to confidently introduce students to the key built environment concepts encountered in UrbanPlan.

Marymount Secondary School enthusiastically volunteered to partner with us and was willing to commit enough teachers to deliver these extended pre-lessons. After six months of development, we were ready to try our new format, which now consisted of three consecutive half-day sessions: The first two half-days were teacher-led pre-lessons, followed by the final ‘build & present’ workshop involving UrbanPlan volunteer facilitators.

To prepare students for the UrbanPlan workshop, a lot of information is disseminated over a very short period of time.  Therefore, we decided early on that intensive student learning in small groups would be a key feature.

Marymount’s inaugural cohort consisted of 139 students divided into 24 teams, so concurrent pre-lessons would require a large number of teaching staff. To this end, 25 teachers experienced UrbanPlan in an introductory workshop. Then, 16 teachers and teaching assistants, together, delivered the pre-lesson activities. Our UrbanPlan-HK instructors explained the rules of the game and demonstrated the UrbanPlan-HK financial app. And then we collectively held our breaths. The workshops worked rather well. Very well.

Marymount Secondary School S1 team collaborating on their scheme

When we began our journey to develop a pandemic-friendly format, little did we know that the result would be set to become our preferred UrbanPlan-HK delivery model. Having been tested at both Marymount and Po Leung Kuk Lo Kit Sing (1983) College, our volunteer facilitators have also expressed a preference for the format, as they now experience a more intense, busy workshop day with less downtime, and only need to take a half-day off work to join.

We’ve learned so much from this past year. Far from being put on hiatus, we’ve concluded the academic year with a bumper run of workshops in June & July: 195 students, 5 workshop days, 2 schools, 3 grade levels.

What an unexpected journey it has been. We couldn’t have achieved this outcome without the support from the wider UrbanPlan-HK community: Whether as a student, teacher, school (vice) principal, funding partner, corporate partner or volunteer facilitator – each one of you has contributed to our best UrbanPlan-HK year yet. A massive thank you to ALL! You are the program.

Our heartfelt appreciation from all of us at UrbanPlan-HK, for your time, dedication and continued support. We look forward to seeing you again next academic year. Thank You!