The Design Council

After my tutorial it was suggested that I take a look at The Design Council because it has loads of free resources/case studies such as 'How to run a design a primary school design workshop'. I've been thinking about how this project could branch out to school programs, since that is a place where gender stereotypes/norms seem to be heavily enforced (for example, segregated P.E sessions)

Here is an example of one of the programs I am altering to fit this context:

A Ten Step Guide To Running A Design Workshop in Primary Schools: 
This workshop could be based around gender awareness and gets the children to make posters or leaflets, which could be stuck around the school and in the local community, to encourage people not to enforce gender stereotypes.

1. Take your class out on a trip to identify opportunities for design improvements.                           - Introduce the topic: explain what gender is and how some people find it hard to identify with just one side of the 'gender norms'. Give examples (boys like football, girls like pink etc). Ask the class if they agree with this. For this specific issue, it might be useful to have a discussion about where they think gender is enforced and how they feel about it. 
2. If you can't get the class out of school, get pupils to look for problems elsewhere.                        - Get the pupils thinking about where these posters could go and what they are trying to achieve. Is there anywhere in school where gender is enforced? (e.g toilets - do they think this is necessary?).
3. Think about what it's like to be someone else.                                                                                 - Get the pupils to think about what it might be like to feel uncomfortable with their gender and what they think they could do to make those people feel better. How do they feel when they are told that they can't do something because they're a boy/girl - what are those things?
4. Get the students to share the problems they identified with the class.                                             - A simple group discussion might help them understand more about the topic and if they can contribute an experience of their own of a time when they were told they couldn't or shouldn't do something, others might be able to relate. Ask them to make a list of five examples as a group.
5. Get the class to vote for which problem they want to use to address.                                             - In this context, it might be down to the individual to draw a poster based on one of the examples discussed with the class or a personal experience. 
6. Brainstorm initial ideas for the problem.                                                                                         - Do the pupils think it would be better to make a poster or a leaflet? How big do they think it should be and what kind of colours should they use?
7. Vote again.                                                                                                                                       - Or rather than voting (so that everybody can tackle the issue their own way) discuss on their tables what each of them have decided to do.
8. Sketch out a poster or leaflet design. What will it say? What will the picture be?                          - At this stage the students should have a rough idea of what their posters are going to look like (sketch). In small groups/each table, should discuss how to make their poster look more eye catching.
9. Time for production.                                                                                                                         - Let the students get creative with their poster designs, draw illustrations and eye-catching titles showing their opinion on gender stereotyping. 
10. Hang the posters around the school.                                                                                                - After the posters are up, ask the pupils what they want to achieve with these posters? Make five aims to review at a later date. 

I really like the idea of having some sort of workshop for children to make them aware of this issue. Not only is it a current topic in the media because of people such as Caitlyn Jenner, but we're at a time in society where people aren't so afraid of challenging social norms/constructs. Hopefully by getting children to be more aware of gender enforcing/stereotyping, they'll feel more comfortable being themselves and not feeling like they have to conform so much as they get older.