Curating Wonder: Festival of Education Shanghai

When designing a classroom, what deserves the most attention? Its appearance, its atmosphere, or the possibilities it creates for the children who inhabit it? At the Festival of Education in Shanghai, Winsy Flores invited educators to consider the relationship between classroom design, perception and learning. Drawing on Rocket’s developing work in curatorial pedagogy, the workshop looked at how seemingly small decisions — the placement of materials, opportunities for movement, quieter places to think, or objects left open to interpretation — influence how children encounter and participate in their environment.

These ideas connect research in perception and curiosity with the practical judgement of teachers who observe children closely and continually adapt their provision. Shanghai offered an opportunity to share this work with an international audience, while engaging with wider festival conversations about identity, student voice, developing competencies and artificial intelligence. It also raised a question worth carrying back into every classroom: what assumptions about children’s capabilities are quietly communicated through the environments adults create for them?