Response to Review of
Machi-Work: Education for Participation

Eileen Adams
Education for Sustainability Program
London South Bank University

Citation: Adams, Eileen. (2004). “Response to Review of Machi-Work: Education for Participation.” Children, Youth and Environments 14(1). Retrieved [date] from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

The collaboration on which this book is based started from a presentation at a conference in Italy in 1994. Although it was in Japanese, translated into Italian, and I do not understand either of these languages, I felt an instant connection, as the story that the visuals told was so familiar– exploring young people’s relationship with their local neighborhood. Breakfast the following morning with the two Japanese presenters, Reiko Ogiwara and Ka’chan Takahashi introduced me to the work of the Machi Group in Japan, an interdisciplinary group of educators, environmental designers and local government officers. We exchanged information about our work, followed by an invitation for me to give a lecture tour in Japan. People were responsive and interested in what I showed and told, but were keen to see projects in the UK for themselves.

I organized a ten-day study tour in the UK for 24 Japanese colleagues from a range of disciplines to visit schools, environmental centers and projects in residential areas in London, Hampshire, Newcastle and Glasgow to see first hand examples of participation in the design and development process, some of which I had written about previously in Changing Places: Young People’s Participation in Environmental Planning (published by The Children’s Society, 1998). Following that, four of us were invited to work with colleagues in various places in Japan. We published accounts of our experience in Streetwise published by the National Association for Urban Studies in the UK and Machi Group newsletters in Japan, but felt that the material might be of interest to a wider readership. The idea of the Machi-Work book was born, and with support from the Sasakawa Foundation and The British Council for publication, Isami Kinoshita and I set to work to bring together contributions from a number of colleagues.

The book celebrates both similarities and differences. There are similarities in the principles that underpin our work, but differences in practice and in the way we shared our ideas. The Japanese way was to provide a lot of narrative detail of specific projects and the British (or perhaps more accurately, Scots), was to analyze key ideas from a range of instances and to create a framework that could be applied elsewhere. We were both happy to take a critical stance to our work, recognizing that there are strengths and weaknesses and knowing that everything can be improved through practice. We communicated by email and developed a format for the book– one page of visuals, one page of English text and two pages of Japanese text. Ken Baynes was responsible for the graphic design. Strict limits on the amount of text meant that there was not always enough space for exact translation. Things worked out more or less as we had planned, except that not all the images were printed in color, although they had been selected not only for their content, but also with visual quality and color balance in mind.

The experience of shared reflection was important for the authors, helping us to articulate our experience. It showed us that some strategies for supporting environmental education were transferable to situations in two different countries, but that some were culture-specific. For example, in the UK, young people are encouraged to be involved in critical study where they make judgments and form opinions. The key thing is being able to explain how you have arrived at that judgment or opinion, and show the evidence on which it is based. In Japan, it seems this is more difficult to do. Cultural mores do not make it easy to engage in critical debate.

This has relevance for many people involved in education for sustainability. We are all well-intentioned and although we work primarily within one cultural setting, we imagine that the ideas we espouse have global significance. However, they are probably firmly rooted in our own cultural experience and may not travel well. Cross-cultural collaboration in education is one way to find out.

Eileen Adams is a consultant whose work links art, design, environment and education. She has wide experience as a teacher, lecturer, researcher, consultant and writer, working in the UK and abroad. Her work has focused on art, design and environmental education, young people’s participation in environmental change, design and use of school grounds, inter-professional collaboration in education and public art. She currently leads POWER DRAWING, the education program of the Campaign for Drawing. Eileen is Chair of the Education Panel for the Design Commission for Wales, Chair of Governors at Eveline Lowe Primary School in London and a member of the Learning Environments of the Future Advisory Group for the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE).