Introduction:

When we talk about a utopia, we talk about a place in which everything is well organized, flawless, and just perfect. Everyone has different interpretations of what a utopia means to them. Project Utopia was a group project in Term 3 on which we had to redesign Fremantle Port into a community where all people can thrive; which was a collab with Nicole Lockwood ( Consultant in Infrastructure, planning and Urban Development). The idea that my group Rithvik, Jacob, Kaitlyn and I had designed was a sustainable car park that incorporates an indigenous cultured gardening system and a bike service system; located at the top of the peninsula of Fremantle port and was inspired by a sustainable car park in France. After reading the giver and discussing more of what makes a society perfect in our view and the ways we could achieve a perfect society, we were led to believe that it shouldn’t be that hard to design a place such as that. Little did we know that there was so much more to redesigning this port than just well redesigning. We gained much knowledge on what makes a place liveable, sustainable, and what needs to come into consideration. After a busy term that involved visitors who provided us with advice, an excursion to Freo port, hard work, creating vision boards, and collaboration; we ended the term by presenting our projects and vision boards with well-written speeches to parents, visitors, and specialists.

U.N Global Goals:

Connecting the U.N Global Goals to our Project Utopia was one of our major priorities, that we needed to keep in mind throughout the project. The Global Goals are a collection of 17 interlinked goals designed to be a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all”. These Global Goals have given me a broader understanding of how to make my redesign of Fremantle Port a community where all people can thrive by making me realise the issues that the world faces, and we can get involved in making these problems less of a problem. A specialist named Georgie Scott who is a consultant for sustainability helped us connect greenspace to culture; the Global Goals that have made a connection to my project have also given me ideas on how my project can be more efficient and sustainable. For example, Global Goal 12 (Responsible consumption and production) is how we need to manage the resources we have. The water we use for our indigenous garden will need to be used wisely and not consumed. This is why it is better to collect water from rain or rivers (use filtration) instead of from taps. This also connects to Global Goal 15 (Life on Land) which is a global goal that is a part of connecting greenspace to culture. Another thing I’ve learned from this experience is that global goals can actually connect to other Global Goals. Like how Global Goal 12 and 15 connected.

Public Speaking:

Public speaking was one of the skills that I hadn’t quite reached my full potential and still makes me quite nervous. If I’m being honest, I wasn’t very thrilled about having to public speak in front of parents, as well as having to public speak in front of the entire class. I found speaking in front of my whole class to be the most nerve-racking for me. I was so nervous that during practice presenting I didn’t show any facial expressions, hand gestures, or anything. You could practically see the nervousness written all over my face. Confidence was a skill that I needed to acquire the most when public speaking, along with being able to express myself with body language and facial expressions. Over the period of time, I had to practice; I had learned how to become a more confident speaker and use my body and face to express myself. I got some help from my family, teachers, and friends and was able to practice my speech most days in front of someone. On the day of presenting to parents, I realised that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be and I did a great job delivering my speech. From this project, I have improved with public speaking and have learnt how to become a more confident and expressive speaker.

ASC Capabilities:

The ASC capabilities were skills that were required from each individual in Project Utopia. They’re many different skills and abilities, and everyone is able to achieve some of these abilities while also having capabilities that need improvement. The ASC capabilities are split into 3 categories. Positive relationships, spirited agency, and powerful thinking. The section that I worked on the most during this project was ‘Powerful relationships. I realised in this project that working with my team was going to be very important. Collaborating to get work done and including everyone in the project so that we can make our idea bigger and better together. Doing all of this sounded easy at the beginning, but as time flew by being able to work as a team wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Communicating was harder as people had other ideas in mind. Collaboration was difficult when it came to getting work done. And eventually, effective communication started to break down. I knew that me being able to build positive relationships with my group members was going to help us achieve the main goal of this project. I created a team’s chat for my group to communicate more even when not at school, I helped my group members when they weren’t sure of what to do, I made sure that we were able to communicate with each other to know we were all on the right and same track, I made sure everyone was focused and everyone was contributing to the work. From this, I improved in creating positive relationships and learned how to be able to work with other peers as a group.

Design Thinking Process:

The design thinking process was the 5 steps that we took in order to achieve the goal of redesigning Fremantle Port. These steps were Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Feedback. The step from the design thinking process that I focused on the most was Empathise. Empathising is to understand and share the feelings of one another. In this case, we had to understand more about the Fremantle community and what would benefit us the most if we were the residents of Fremantle. I prioritised Empathise by gaining more information about what the Fremantle community is like. Being able to connect with the Fremantle Community and the people of Fremantle was an important part of this project. Being able to understand this provides a better interpretation of how we can redesign Fremantle into a community where all people can thrive. For example, from research, I understood more about the culture around Fremantle and how they connect with indigenous culture. I understood the culture of which Fremantle acknowledges and connected this within my project (Indigenous Cultured Gardening system). From this, I have learnt how to be able to Empathise with communities and other people, which can come in handy in future projects throughout my journey to All Saints College.

Conclusion:

I think that Project Utopia was a very effective Project that helped us year 7’s understand more about how we can make the world a liveable place that benefits people, communities, and the environment. We understood how we individuals can make a difference to reduce worldwide problems. We were pushed to reach our full potential of thinking big to help Fremantle become a community where all people can thrive. From this project of redesigning Fremantle, I learned more about what making a place liveable means and how it benefits people and communities. Not only did Project Utopia give me a wider understanding of the outside world and how to make it a liveable, efficient, and sustainable place, but it also helped me develop and improve some skills. Such as my public speaking skills, collaboration, effective communication, and empathising. Something that I think my group could have done better is to start on the Vision Board a bit earlier so that we could have planned about how it would look instead of getting straight into it. Because of this, we ended up starting the Vision Board again to make it connect more with our group Project which took up a lot of our time; as well as being able to stick with an idea and not trying to add additional ideas last minute which just made things harder. Overall, Project Utopia has been an innovative and educating event that has helped me realise more about the world we live in and develop helpful abilities; because of this, I am certain that the Year 7s of 2022 will enjoy this project just as much as I have.