advisory visits - helping you plan for change outdoors
PLEASE NOTE:
Advisory Visits are not landscape design consultations and do not result in masterplans or detailed specifications.
We do offer a landscape design service - please click here for details.
Sometimes, the biggest impacts on outcomes for children are found in the most unexpected spaces and places...
Our two-three hour Advisory Visits offer a fresh, focused perspective on how your outdoor spaces can be used, resourced and managed. Our expertise in designing innovative outdoor learning and play spaces is combined with many years’ experience of helping teachers enrich their curriculum by taking learning outdoors and improving the quality of playtimes. This expertise helps you focus your thinking, offer an insight into the true potential of your site and inspire you to make sustainable changes to the way you use, design or manage your outdoor spaces and places.
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In our experience, the best outdoor learning happens when the focus is on doing things outdoors, rather than having things. We are truly independent; our focus is always on helping you identify how to make outdoors support your children and your curriculum, not on selling you 'stuff'.
Advisory Visit
Before the visit, we'll chat about your aspirations and how the school grounds are currently used. At the visit itself, we’ll tour your outdoor spaces, explore the role they play in the school’s everyday life and, ideally, observe children using them; these discussions and observations should prompt you to question habitual practices outdoors. We’ll discuss your school improvement plan, and where possible, we’ll examine your medium term curriculum plans too.
Together, we'll build a mosaic of realistic options for improvement outdoors. Making use of your expert understanding of your school and its community, we’ll agree key areas for change, whether your motivation is making changes to the way you use or manage outdoors, or making landscape or resource improvements to the space.
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We’ll follow up the visit with an email containing a bulleted summary of the discussions, suggested reading and research, and relevant learning resources or advice sheets that we know will enable you move forwards, whatever the size of your budget.
Advisory Visit +
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The 3-stage Advisory Visit + service offers excellent value for money. If you do have a capital budget, we recommend you spend a just a fraction of it on a PLL Advisory Visit, so that the remainder is spent in the most effective way for your children and your unique school grounds.
Pre-visit, the consultation process begins with a short self-assessment audit, including questions about the character of your grounds, how they are used - during and after school - and by whom, and how they are cared for. The audit helps you look at your space with ‘fresh eyes’ and by analysing your responses, we can begin to help you identify where your development priorities might lie.
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The Advisory Visit and audit will be summarised in an illustrated report detailing current use, resourcing and practice; the key points discussed at the visit; recommendations for managing change and a suggested reading / further research list. This report will provide you with the basis for an action plan for improvements that will have a positive impact on children’s experiences at your school.