Last Friday, Philip Pullman opened an outdoor learning centre at an Oxford Primary school. The garden was designed and made by BA (Hons) Furniture: Design & Craft students at Buckinghamshire New University, volunteers and artists; and was once just an unnused stretch of land by the school’s bike shed.

Andrew Shenton, Senior Lecturer of Furniture at BNU, said about the project: “The garden is a unique environment where children can walk along different paths and use question posts and other outdoor learning materials, like sentence builders, character blocks and drawing walls, to help develop their ideas. […] Each phase of the process is represented by question and character posts, sentence builders and drawing walls. It is an exciting project which the students have thoroughly enjoyed taking part in and which will provide enjoyment and wonder for generations to come.”