Over last few terms, we have started on a project called ‘Project Utopia’. Project Utopia is a thing that we did, in which we collaborated with the Future of Fremantle. As you might have known, Fremantle Port is moving in 2030 to Kwinana. Our project was to redesign this area, and we developed many skills during this project. For this project, we have worked in groups to create vision boards and then in Term 3 Week 9, we presented our ideas to parents who were willing to come and listen
First we started with the Giver book. The Giver was a book by Louis Lowry who talked about a world which was a perfect ‘utopia’. In English lessons, we analysed this book. This was the very start of our Project Utopia start. We explored the pros and cons the the main character’s world, and the meanings of it too.
Next, we officially launched Project Utopia when the Future of Fremantle committee came and gave a presentation of the area that was moving. The image outline in red was all going to move, and so the space would be all plain. Our task in Project Utopia was to apply our understanding of liveability and urbanisation, learnt from our HASS lessons, and to redesign this area as a whole class
After, we went on a excursion to Fremantle so that we could look at the place that we were redesigning, and get a sense of how large the place was. We each received booklets on the day (right), where we would answer questions about our observations and our wonders.
We splits into groups of 3-4, and brainstormed 100 ideas in 10 minutes for things that we might have used in it. We aimed to have lots and lots of things to incorporate into the design of Fremantle.
Next, we made vision boards in our same group. Vision boards are boards that have little to no words, and aim to present ideas in a very visual way. These vision boards at the end of Term 2 were presented to parents so that they could see what project utopia was about
After finishing creating ideas in our groups, we got together as a class and we brainstormed all the ideas that we need to incorporate into our class design. We made a document, with a table that was split into 7 big sections. Each sections had lots if ideas related to that topic that we were going to put into the new Fremantle. For example, under the ‘Sustainability’ section, we had lots of ideas such as green spaces, interactive sculptures, solar panels and floating wind farms to name a few. All of these were going to be incorporated some way into our class design. Below is our full list of ideas.
After officially deciding what we were going to incorporate into our Fremantle redesign, we officially started building a to-scale 3D model of the place. The final model was split into 7 pieces, and half the class used hot glue, wool, plastic and other materials to create this model
Meanwhile, the the other half of the class were creating things in a computer program called Cospace. Cospace is a tool that lets people create 360° virtual worlds. Some of the things that were created in Cospace were the film studio, the floating wind farms, and the interactive sculptures
On the final day of our Project Utopia, we presented our idea of the Fremantle redesign. Instead of simply calling it the Fremantle redesign, we created a name for it, which was Binowee Yaringa, which in Noongar means ‘green place by the sea’. We presented this to parents who wanted to come in the morning. We had created speeches presenting our ideas, and talked to them about our new place Binowee Yaringa
What did we learn from this?
Over the course of this project, we learnt many capabilities throughout Project Utopia. The main capabilities were collaboration, effective communication, problem solving and organisation. We had to collaborate a lot in our groups of 3-4 to brainstorm possible ideas. Along our way in Project Utopia, we encountered many bumps and obstacles. We had to problem solve and find ways or methods to solve that. This was very important, and we were very resilient in this. We also had to be organized in our ideas. We created many things, and had to organize our time and make sure that our models in real life, and our 3D virtual models were finished before the showcase. And finally we improved on our effect communication capability, as we had to present our Fremantle redesign in a effective way to parents who knew little to nothing about the port moving.
