The Junk Palace

Abstract

This is an account of the introduction of an idea into a school curriculum, its problems, success and eventual development. The idea was to make a building, a process which might have the effect of integrating such things as art, music, drama, philosophy-the possibilities in such an open-ended situation being endless-a building constructed by pupils into and through which they could develop over the two summers of 1969/70.

The school is a co-educational comprehensive unit of 1300 pupils. The school has no 6th Form, students continuing their education do so at the 6th Form College or College of Technology. It does, however, have a 'non-academic' 6th Form made up of students gaining further qualifications, the 6th Form college of the comprehensive system being selective at 4 '0' Levels; some of these students. took an active part in this work. The fully comprehensive stream had during 1969/70 risen to only the 3rd Form of the school, the 4th and 5th and 6th years were still classified as ";secondary modern";.