Webinar Description:
Schools are vital infrastructure for healthy, flourishing communities, and are essential to improving quality of life for city residents. From 2021 - 2022, Autocase, the Big SandBox and the Children and Nature Network, in partnership with Denver Public Schools (DPS), used a statistical regression analysis to determine actual outcomes using quantitative data from DPS and the Colorado Department of Education to determine benefits of the Learning Landscapes (LL) program, a large scale green schoolyard conversion project.

Lois Brink
Chief Strategist, The Big Sandbox, Inc.
Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Colorado

 

A faculty member at the University of Colorado for 25 years, she has been Director of Learning Landscapes (LL) for twenty years and has a deep understanding of children and their social and emotional well-being. She is founder and the principal leader in Denver Public Schools' Learning Landscapes project, a $50 million design and construction effort for 96 elementary schoolyards completed in the fall of 2012. Learning Landscapes is an innovative schoolyard redevelopment program with a threefold mission: 1) design and construct play environments for healthy living that address the whole child-social, emotional, academic, and nutritional well-being; 2) empower children and communities through, community organizing, healthy eating and active living, and 3) evaluate and research these activities in a comprehensive manner.

Professor Brink's knowledge and experience of children's development and play-coupled with her 45 years as a landscape architect-is critical to other similar initiatives. During her stewardship of Learning Landscapes, the organization made substantial progress in Colorado and across the country. Professor Brink is currently examining the sustainability of schoolyard redevelopment through three other efforts: 1) International Green Schoolyards Alliance and its global lessons effort, 2) an evaluation of Denver Public Schools Learning Landscapes program, and 3) working with North Philadelphia Schools and the School District of Philadelphia to redevelop schoolyards as part of the City's green infrastructure program. This year she has begun collaborating with the New Orleans Office of Youth and Families with the Nature Everywhere two-year campaign.

Most recently she has joined The Big SandBox (TBS), a newly formed non-profit organization to support small-scale neighborhood efforts and grow them into large system-wide community change. They help build sustainable, healthy communities through educational, cultural, and historically grounded projects and initiatives that improve the physical and emotional well-being of children, young adults and citizens of all ages.
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Learning Objectives:
1. Exploring how to leverage empirical data over time to generate quantitative insights on outcomes.
2. Understand the multi faceted benefits of green schoolyards through a case study.
3. Learn about a schoolyard greening effort in Denver - 90 schoolyards and 40 million dollars later.