Making spaces, understanding places: geography students explore Mayfield Park

The decisions behind a public park are not always immediately visible. Routes, planting, water, access, ecology and spaces for gathering come together to create an everyday experience, but each reflects a careful understanding of how a place needs to work.

For Year 12 geography students from Greenhead College in Huddersfield, a field trip to Mayfield Park offered the chance to examine some of those decisions in context. The visit formed part of their study of ‘Making Spaces, Making Places’, connecting a curriculum topic with the development of a major new piece of Manchester’s public realm.

Organised through the Landscape Institute’s education outreach programme, the day brought more than 100 students to the park for a combination of fieldwork and short talks. Jim Gibson and Alfie Hiscock from Gillespies’ Manchester studio led three walk-and-talk sessions, introducing the history of Mayfield and explaining how the former industrial site became Manchester city centre’s first new park in more than a century.

Now open for more than four years, Mayfield Park offered students a clear example of how places change over time and how decisions made through the design process shape their future. Jim and Alfie discussed Gillespies’ role in delivering the park, the collaboration involved and the contribution of different built environment disciplines.

The sessions also made the role of the landscape architect more tangible. Students heard how landscape architects respond to a site’s history and environmental conditions, work with other specialists and make decisions that influence public life, movement, nature and long-term use.

This kind of direct engagement matters because landscape architecture is still unfamiliar to many young people. Students may already be interested in geography, design, ecology or the changing climate without knowing that these subjects can lead to a career focused on shaping the places around them.

The visit built on the Landscape Institute’s ongoing relationship with Greenhead College. By connecting landscape architecture with subjects already being taught, the programme helps teachers bring professional practice into the curriculum and introduce the profession as a credible career pathway.

Feedback from the college reflected the success of the day, with the talks helping students understand both the changes at Mayfield and the work of landscape architects. Meeting practitioners in a place they have helped to shape gave the students a direct connection between their fieldwork, the decisions behind the park and the career opportunities available within the profession.

For some, the visit may have been their first introduction to landscape architecture. We hope it will not be their last.