The life of a school involves complex interactions of a diversity of people, acting sometimes as individuals and sometimes as groups, within a physical space. The connection between physical school settings and the activities that take place is not simple (Blackmore et al., 2011; Duthilleul et al., 2021), with the totality of the educational environment depending on organisational and social aspects, as well as physical and material resources, and the relationships and interactions these all support (Gislason, 2010; Woolner et al., 2022). This is why collaborative investigation of school space, its use and design, can be beneficial. By raising awareness of the physical environment and sharing experiences of their activities within it, school communities can develop shared understandings that can improve cohesion and contribute to ideas for the future (Parnell, 2015). Using shared experiences of physical spaces to generate ideas is clearly suitable, drawing as it does on the practice of site visits in architecture, but research and practice also demonstrates the success of desk-based visual-spatial methods, using plans and images of school space (Woolner et al., 2010). In this paper I will present methods developed through the CoReD project (project ref.: 2019-1-UK01-KA201-061954, 2019-22, https://www.ncl.ac.uk/cored/ ) to support such participatory approaches to understanding and developing school spaces. These activities, moving within spaces or discussing images, enable experiences to be shared and support the development of knowledge of the setting, perhaps opening minds to the potential of the specific site. Through considering the use of the methods (Bøjer and Woolner, 2024; Coelho, 2022; Sigurðardóttir et al., 2021), in a range of educational contexts, I will explore how the methods facilitate progress from initial recognition and articulation of experiences to the development of shared ideas. I will then begin to consider the external circumstances that are needed to support the participatory design process through these stages. A key issue is what, if anything, in the material and social setting changes as a result of the collaborative approach. In relation to outcomes, it is notable that these processes occur within the constraints of existing structures, cultures and funding within the school and across the wider society.

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