NARRATIVE THREADS

For the days onsite at PCEC, the program unfolds through four concurrent narratives. Delegates select a narrative each day and follow that pathway through the story of UNLEASH, exploring ideas from different perspectives. As sessions vary slightly across narratives each day, please refer to the program below to view the specific topics and presenters.

WEDNESDAY 13TH MAY

Narrative A & B: Learning from the Centre (Group A & B)

Across the conference, several narratives draw on learning shaped by place, culture, and long-standing relationships. These stories do not speak for First Nations knowledge systems, nor do they present a single worldview. Instead, they reflect what emerges when learning is grounded in context. It asks:

  1. How can learning that is deeply grounded in place, culture, and relationship challenge dominant educational assumptions?
  2. What can educators learn from long-term, community-led learning practices that unfold beyond standard timelines and metrics?
  3. How might we respectfully engage with place-based knowledge in ways that honour context, responsibility, and reciprocity
Experiencing the conference through this lens you will leave with a deeper understanding of how learning takes shape in complex, place-based contexts, particularly where climate, culture, and community sit outside standard educational models.

Outcomes

  • Gain insight into incredible place-based, strength-focused learning approaches shaped by context and community.
  • Understand how climate, culture, and lived experience influence learning spaces, programs, and timelines.
  • Reflect on how lessons from complex environments can inform practice elsewhere, without extracting or generalising them.

Program (Group A)

10:30am - Learning from the Centre - Understanding Context in the NT - Tonielle Dempers (REFLECT)

11:30am - The History of Tomorrow: Looking Back and Thinking Forward - Rachel Faber, Lewina Schrale and Jessica Wang (EXPERIMENT)

1:30pm - Yirramagardu School, Roebourne - Finn Pedersen & Lenore Stanton (ENGAGE)

2:30pm - Living. Learning. Leading. – A Tapestry of School Life in Western Australia (EXHIBITION)


Program (Group B)

10:30am - Living. Learning. Leading. – A Tapestry of School Life in Western Australia (EXHIBITION)

11:30am - Learning from the Centre - Understanding Context in the NT - Tonielle Dempers (REFLECT)

1:30pm - Moorditjabiny (Becoming stronger by coming together) - Clare Mengler & Jack Collard (EXPERIMENT)

2:30pm - Unlearning Empire: How Timor Leste can break from Colonial Schooling and Build its own Educational Future - Matt Dwyer (ENGAGE)

Narrative C & D: Intersectional, Multicultural, Transformational Learning (Group C & D)

This narrative explores learning that crosses cultural, disciplinary, and neurodiverse boundaries, recognising that learners are shaped by multiple, intersecting identities. It considers transnational perspectives and learning cultures, where education extends across borders and digital platforms, empowering learners to curate their own pathways. It asks:

  1. How can shifts in language, space, curriculum, and leadership align to transform the way learning environments and designed and experienced?
  2. In what ways can schools and learning environments be shaped to recognise, include and empower intersectional, multicultural, and neurodiverse learners?
  3. What new models of success, wellbeing, and collective thriving can emerge when students, educators and designers co-create their educational journeys?

Experiencing the conference through this lens you will emerge with an expanded and inspired knowledge of diverse learning ecosystems emerging across India and globally.

Outcomes: 

  • Gain narrative-mapping tools to rethink your school’s identity and purpose.
  • See how alternative models and micro-narratives drive innovation in complex contexts.
  • Take home strategies to apply global insights to local contemporary learning challenges


Program (Group C)

10:30am - Dissonant Futures, Shared Hopes: Educational Transformations in India - Dr Anuradha Chatterjee and Philip Idle (ENGAGE)

11:30am - Living. Learning. Leading. – A Tapestry of School Life in Western Australia (EXHIBITION)

1:30pm - Ready... Set.... - Lara Makintosh (REFLECT)

2:30pm - From Kampung to Compound: Context, Culture and Care in Learning Environments - Nur Syazadiyanah binti Suraini (EXPERIMENT)


Program (Group D)

10:30am - The History of Tomorrow: Looking Back and Thinking Forward, Rachel Faber, Lewina Schrale and Jessica Wang (EXPERIMENT)

11:30am - Dissonant Futures, Shared Hopes: Educational Transformations in India - Dr Anuradha Chatterjee and Philip Idle (ENGAGE)

1:30pm - Living. Learning. Leading. – A Tapestry of School Life in Western Australia (EXHIBITION)

2:30pm - Embedding Cultural Narratives in Aotearoa New Zealand School Design - Jennifer Charteris (REFLECT)


THURSDAY 14TH MAY

Narrative A & B: (Y)Our Learning Everyday (Group A & B)

This narrative explores what it means to be a lifelong learner in today’s rapidly changing world. It focuses on learning as a personal, social, and ecological act—happening everywhere all at once, not only in classrooms. It asks:

  1. How can educators and schools nurture self-regulated, adaptable learners?
  2. What roles can educators, leaders, and designers play in helping learners thrive locally and globally in an age of complexity?
  3. What pedagogies and design innovations enable students to flourish within and beyond school?

Experiencing the conference through this lens you will learn about the possibilities that emerge when learning stretches across generations, restoring connection and belonging.

Outcomes:

  • Learn how to design programs that connect children, families, and community in meaningful new ways.
  • Understand how advanced pedagogies improve wellbeing, engagement, and community cohesion.
  • Leave with practical models for shared-use spaces and long-term community partnerships

Program (Group A)

10:30am - Our Learning: Everyone, Everyday - Freya Kuchel & Georgi Fairley (REFLECT)

11.30am - Living. Learning. Leading. – A Tapestry of School Life in Western Australia (EXHIBITION)

1.30pm - Designing for Regenerative Thinking: Reflecting on Schools as Living Ecosystems - Anne Knock (ENGAGE)

2:30pm - Playing with productive paradox to explore main and hidden student stories of thriving - Jill Willis, Jenna Gillet-Swan & Nick Kelly (EXPERIMENT)


Program (Group B)

10:30am - Post occupancy evaluation - Agatha Partyka, Alison Giancristofaro-Keswell, Ella Camporeale, Nicole Kirby & Olivia McKim (EXPERIMENT)

11:30am - Our Learning: Everyone, Everyday - Freya Kuchel and Georgi Fairley (REFLECT)

1:30pm - Living. Learning. Leading. – A Tapestry of School Life in Western Australia (EXHIBITION)

2:30pm - Breaking down the Boundaries in the Hester Hornbrook Academy Physical Environment - Sally Lasslett (ENGAGE)

Narrative C & D: Hyper Glocal – Third Space Learning (Group C & D)

What if learning were genuinely optional? What would people choose, and what would that reveal about the environments we currently require?

This interactive workshop draws on survey data gathered for the Hyper-Glocal Third Space Learning narrative to explore how learning is shifting beyond the formal classroom into a wider ecology of spaces, relationships, and experiences. Together, participants will examine patterns, tensions, and provocations emerging from the data, including questions of agency, relevance, assessment, community connection, and the changing role of learning environments.

Rather than simply presenting findings, the session invites participants to interpret the data collaboratively, identify the tensions that matter most, and translate these into practical next steps. Through discussion, mapping, and rapid prototyping, the workshop will ask how schools and communities might better support learning that is intergenerational, place-responsive, culturally fluent, and alive to both local and global contexts.

Participants will leave not only with a richer understanding of “third space” learning, but with ideas for experiments, partnerships, and actions that can extend beyond the conference.

Outcomes:

  • Identify key tensions and opportunities emerging from the Third Space Learning survey data.
  • Explore how informal, hybrid, and community-connected learning environments can strengthen agency, creativity, collaboration, and belonging.
  • Generate practical ideas for small-scale experiments, partnerships, or design moves that can be taken forward after the workshop.

Program (Group C)

10:30am - Living. Learning. Leading. – A Tapestry of School Life in Western Australia (EXHIBITION)

11:30am - Learning ecosystems for all ages - Derek Bartels, Andrew Pender & Richard Leonard (ENGAGE)

1:30pm - Learning Out Loud: A Non Specialist’s Tinkering Journey Into Space - Meg Berry (EXPERIMENT)

2:30pm - The Schoolyard Greenprint: Designing Outdoor Spaces Where Teens Thrive - Gweneth Leigh (REFLECT)


Program (Group D)

10:30am - Learning ecosystems for all ages - Derek Bartels, Andrew Pender & Richard Leonard (ENGAGE)

11:30am - Post occupancy evaluation - Agatha Partyka, Alison Giancristofaro-Keswell, Ella Camporeale, Nicole Kirby & Olivia McKim (EXPERIMENT)

1:30pm - TBC by Homa Tavangar (REFLECT)

2:30pm - Living. Learning. Leading. – A Tapestry of School Life in Western Australia (EXHIBITION)