Project Utopia is the idea of building a perfect community. We were asked to work in groups of 2 or 3 in which we were to make a physical or digital model of our finished product along with, writing a speech and constitution. This task required you to be able to think outside the box, collaborate with others and stay organised. the knowledge of the global goals and most of our course subjects were also incorporated into this project.
This project challenged us in many ways, we had to be organized and be able to collaborate and communicate effectively with others otherwise your group would have fallen behind. In my group, I stepped up to take on the leadership role to make sure we stayed organized and could complete the project in time for the showcase. One of our biggest challenges was the planning, this is because we all thought different parts of the utopia were most important. To resolve these issues using our prior knowledge on what makes a good utopia to determining the best option. With the help of this project, we learnt that effective communication is the key to a successful group project.
English – The Giver
This project first started during home learning, where we read the book The Giver. This novel is about a boy in a ‘perfect community’ here we were introduced to the idea of a ‘utopia’ and a ‘dystopia’. It taught us that there is no such thing as a ‘perfect community’ but that couldn’t stop us from making a ‘Protopia’. I used that knowledge to make my ‘protopia’ as livable as possible.
Science – Sustainable House
After the Giver, we learnt about sustainability in science. For sustainability we were presented with the task to create a house with 25 sustainable features, this helps us with the liveability factors; infrastructure and environmental quality in our ‘utopia’, for example, the vertical gardens were the inspiration for our key feature our Green ally ways. The green alleyways were similar to the vertical gardens, but the plants were planted in between building which otherwise would be a dark and gloomy alleyway.
HASS – Livability Factors
As part of the utopia we had to make our town as livable as possible, we learnt about the liveability in HASS. The five liveability factors are there to make a place more desirable to live in, the main objective factors are climate, good health and education, safety and stability, infrastructure, and environmental quality. We mainly focused on environmental quality and education; this is because without a good education you wouldn’t be about to get a good job and if there is a lot of unemployment the economy will fall.
HASS – Individual Utopia
Before we got into our groups for this project, we created our own individual utopia. The task was to plan out a utopia based on our personal preferences, one we finished and got put into groups we shared our ideas. This helped when we started our final product as we knew what each other wanted and thought was a utopia.
InnovatED – United Nation Global Goals
During innovatED, we learnt about the United nation global goals. In total there are 17 global goals, and they are there to make our world a better place. My group mainly focused on goals 13, 16 and 17, these are climate action, peace, justice and strong institution and partnerships for the goals. This gave our group a good goal to work towards as we knew that if we insured these features in our utopia, our town would be a lot more liveable.
English – Oral presentation
One of the last things that we prepared was an English speaker, we used this speech to present our utopia at the final showcase. My group talked about three categories; Global goals, sustainability and livability. We included all the main details, talked about how our previous tasks influenced our final product and why our utopia is a utopia.
HASS – Civics and Citizenship: Constitution
The final task we had to complete before the utopia showcase, was writing a constitution. A constitution is a rulebook for a country, it forms all the guidelines of the citizens to follow. My group had decided to make our town a democratic republic meaning we didn’t have a monarch or a prime minister instead we had a president. From this experience, I learned that the government determines the quality of the town, so we tried to make our constitution as fair and equal as possible.
Final Showcase
After one and a half terms of hard work, we finally finished our utopias and made it to the final showcase. This showcase was open to family members, special guests, and ASC staff, we had set up a station displaying our final product and completed constitution which the guests were able to view and ask us questions while we read our speeches and explain our project and utopia to them. This was a one of a kind experience and I will never forget it.
| What would I do differently? | I think we should have used our first few weeks to get our planning done faster so we would have more time to build and get more accreditations as towards the end we were rushing in the construction of our utopia. |
| Aspects I found challenging | I found the building the most challenging. This is because we had to build a lot in a short amount of time. The main reason for this is because we were making a physical model and we also weren’t focusing on the global goals at the start as we wanted to finish our accreditations first. |
| Parts I enjoyed the most. | The part I enjoyed most was the building. Although it was the most challenging aspect of the project, I liked it because it was enjoyable while still learning at the same time. I was also very proud of the final products as they showed all the hard work and thought we put into it. |
We learned a lot about what it meant to be empathetic, respectful, integrous and courageous during this project. From learning how to view things from different people’s perspectives to facing your fears of talking to strangers, this project taught us and helped us grow as students. Overall this project was a unique and different, it allowed us to do some hands on learning and even though it was stressful sometimes it still beats writing on a work sheet. In conclusion I really enjoyed doing something different and can’t wait for what’s next!