At the beginning of the term we began reading a dystopian fiction novel called “The Giver”. Although we did not know it yet, this was the beginning of our Utopia project. The book introduced the concept of a Utopian society, but in The Giver, although their society met all of their people’s physical needs, it came at great cost to their emotional needs and personal development. So began our journey to create our own version of a Utopian society, which fit certain criteria established by the United Nations’ global goals. We were in charge of creating our own Utopia, deciding for ourselves what mattered and which criteria our society would meet.

In science we then began physically constructing our sustainable houses. This was challenging as our studies in Science showed us how scarce some resources are, like water and energy, and showed us ways we could use much less of these precious resources, by using certain types of sustainably sourced  building materials and  making modifications such as including water and electricity saving features. This would prove to be vital as we were tasked with making our Utopia’s as sustainable as possible. Also, the decisions we made at this stage about our buildings, then lead to other questions such as what our sustainable power source would be, which we would cover in later subject areas. It became obvious very quickly, how much planning and thought had to go into designing a community. It was not simply just building some structures and placing them randomly, it was a complicated process which required a lot of thought and planning to get it right. A decision we made about one thing, such as the types of houses we were going to build, impacted on other decisions such as how we would power them

In HASS we learnt about  the factors of livability including air quality and population, and how citizens are affected by large scale decisions.  This was important in our Utopia because our goal was to make citizens happy and look after their health,  while also having a renewable and sustainable society.  These two things did not always go hand in hand. So for example our society did not allow any form of non-renewable energy such a petrol or coal, which then meant most citizens did not have car, so had to use public transport which was powered by electricity. So the citizens didn’t have the convenience of a car but had the benefits that not having a car brought such as less pollution, and getting fit walking or riding their bikes.

Other decisions we made to improve liveability were things such as using blue street lights as we researched the effects that lighting can have on psychological behavior, and decided it was important to incorporate this feature to improve mood and calm people’s moods and reduce the suicide and crime rates. I found it interesting that the colour of the light could have such a large impact on someone’s mental health and how that could then affect a community.

Armed with this information we began individually drawing a layout of our utopias, incorporating the things we learnt from  the previous units, such as pollution and sustainability, while also incorporating elements we wanted in our designs. This was harder than I thought it would be because although I had great ideas of what I wanted in my Utopia for buildings and services, I then had to consider what infrastructure and power sources I would need. Also, after I had got near the end of drawing my design, I wanted to add more things in, such as a wind farm, but I couldn’t add it because there was no space so I had to draw it offsite and simple imply its existence by drawing some arrows.

Everyone was then sorted into groups randomly. In these groups we had to consider others designs and ideas, as we began researching the UN global goals. We sorted them into an order of what we thought was the most important to the least important. Once we had decided that order, we  incorporated them into our Utopia via accreditations. My group agreed to try and achieve 3 accreditations and then try for more if we had time. This later became an issue within our group because one member wanted to keep getting accreditations past the three we had agreed, even when there were still design issues and other things to fix in our Utopia. It became a bit of a struggle to get everything done and to compromise and what was essential. We fixed this issue by compromising on 5 accreditations and the other two group members helping finish the design.

Groups were gifted an accreditation when our facilitators believed that we had reached the standards set by the one of the UN global goals. Gaining accreditations showed us how to problem solve and at the end of our utopia project my group had been accredited for 5 goals, namely Goal 3 good health and wellbeing, Goal 4 quality education, Goal 6 clean water and sanitation, Goal 7 for renewable and clean energy and Goal 16 peace and justice.

To meet the accreditation goals we did the following:

• For Goal 3 we ensured every member of our community had access to free health care. We considered universal free health care was the most important aspect of our community’s good health and wellbeing. In the health care system we incorporated a free (compulsory)  immunization program. Additionally, for wellbeing, our society had communal open areas, parades, parks and services.

• For goal 4, quality education we developed a rigorous training and qualification program for teachers. There were set exams for them to pass and were assessed on their capabilities every few years . By reassessing teachers regularly our society ensured that only all teachers were as qualified as possible rather than them just passing exams at university and then never testing them again. Our society also made education free.

• For goal 6 instead of using ground water or purchasing it from other countries, we harvested ice and snow from nearby valleys and mountains and filtered it through our water filtration system, which allowed us to use a natural resource at low cost  to the environment and provided our people with unlimited clean fresh water. In terms of sanitation our  system efficiently removed waste to offsite facilities to process sewage and this included grey water recycling.

• For goal  7 renewable and clean energy,  we developed a thorium plant. Our sources of renewable and clean energy were a feature of our Utopia project and we put the most work into achieving this global goal. Thorium is a form of clean nuclear energy which delivered our Utopia’s power needs while not compromising the environment.  Additionally, we had a solar farm and solar panels on every building.

• For goal 16, peace and justice, we ensured that power was spread among government and individuals equally, so no one had too much power.  We designed separation of powers where the body issuing penalties for a breach of the rules was not the body who decided what the punishment would be. We had a court system where there was a right of appeal and a right of representation.  Our Utopia focused on justice so people were treated fairly.

 Groups then had to decide to either make a physical model of our utopia, or build a digital model in a program called co-spaces. My group decided to make a digital model. The main reason for this initially was we all forgot to bring in materials!  But then we decided with a digital model we could all work on the model whenever we needed such as from home which was more productive. We also didn’t think a physical model would work for our group because none of us felt confident to build. I found the co-spaces program enjoyable because it left room for creativity, which I could not have replicated in a model. I enjoyed making things like a beach and police station out of shapes and paint. Co-spaces showed us how to work around problems and find new solutions to designing and constructing what we needed for our Utopia.

As we began to build our utopia we started to write our constitution, laying out what power leaders would have, and what form of government we would be using, such as a dictatorship or democracy,  and what rights our people had and how they would be upheld. There was not much disagreement in our group when deciding these issues as we all had a similar vision of a just and fair society. We went with a democracy, where power was spread and citizens had rights, such freedom of speech, a right to a fair trial, a right to an education and a right to be sake. I found while it was easy to list off rights our citizens would have, enforcing them and making them a reality was a lot harder. So a freedom of speech for an individual couldn’t be complete freedom because this would mean they could engage in hate speech which would then threaten another person’s safety. There had to be compromises with rights of the individuals versus the rights of the entire community. This wasn’t something I had thought much about before and it made me realize governing and making laws for everyone in the real world is actually really difficult.

 The group presentation and speeches helped our group see things that were well thought out in our Utopia and worked well, but also highlighted a few things we were missing and could improve on, like our government (we didn’t have enough included about it) and we needed more on the environment . It was good to listen to other groups ideas and get some feedback on ours so we could improve our Utopia. It was good to get feedback as it was helpful.

The Utopia project was a challenging experience but overall a good one. I did not realize how much there was to consider when creating a community and how many professions and jobs were involved. Actually creating our Utopia ourselves step by step was a really good way to learn about what is involved and was way more interesting than just hearing people talk about it or just reading about it in books and then answering written questions, which I basically hate and find boring. Working with my group was a pretty good experience too as we worked pretty well together most of the time and each member had different strengths and could use those to help the group achieve what we wanted. I really liked seeing other people’s models and ideas. It made me wish I had done the model differently and had more of a walk through digital tour, but if I had then other parts of the Utopia might have suffered, as this would have taken a lot more time. For me the best part of Utopia was actually seeing the finished project with a place I had helped build and would really like to actually live in.