Hack the School: A Creative Toolkit to Transform School Spaces

The ‘Hack the School’ project provides school communities a guided experience to support the transformation of their learning spaces. The aim is to foster change through a comprehensive and co-creative approach facilitating the transition from traditional uses of space to innovative ones with the concept of wellbeing as primary agency. A conceptual framework based on seven principles—welcome, belonging, communication, cooperation, diversity, movement and transduction—and an applied creative toolkit equip the process and provide a unique and novel perspective to the topic of innovative learning environments. Thus, the project channels the emerging needs regarding educational spaces challenging the current regulations that the public administration applies in Spain and initiates a dialogical collaboration between the field of education and architecture. The challenge open to all schools and funded by the Jaume Bofill Foundation received over 170 proposals in the Catalan context, where 30 schools were selected and are now becoming effective ‘hackers’.