Hundreds of school children were asked what they thought about the Bristol Temple Quarter project
Temple Meads station and the ‘Temple Quarter’ area(Image: Temple Quarter LLP)
The area around Bristol Temple Meads was recreated in a Minecraft world costing taxpayers £5,000 to help children learn about a regeneration project.
Children in primary schools across the city were told about the plans for the Bristol Temple Quarter project using the video game.
The Temple Quarter regeneration scheme will include 10,000 new homes and space for 22,000 jobs in the land around the city’s main train station.
In March, councillors complained they had been left in the dark about the latest progress, as a masterplan has not yet been made public.
However, children in 15 primary schools in Bristol have been given a chance to get updates, and even inform the design work by “building something” in the Minecraft world.
The Temple Quarter team worked with the University of the West of England on the school workshops.
The area included in the regeneration(Image: Bristol Temple Quarter)
A Temple Quarter spokesperson said: “Using Minecraft is an innovative way to engage children in a major project that will shape the future of where they live.
It uses a digital, play-based approach to support children to develop their own ideas and problem-solving skills, and to engage with engineering as a creative and diverse subject that can impact the world around us.
“To support the programme, we contributed £5,000. This included a one-off £1,500 cost to develop a Bristol Temple Quarter ‘world’ to enable the students to engage directly with BTQ and £3,500 for 27 hour-long workshops at 15 schools from April to July 2024. This equates to under £9 per pupil.”
The regeneration will cover 135 hectares of land to the east and west of Temple Meads.
The cost of creating the Minecraft world was revealed after a freedom of information request. The workshops were targeted at schools in poorer parts of Bristol, reaching around 600 children. There is a masterplan for the first phase of the regeneration, but this hasn’t been published yet.
The spokesperson added: “During the workshops, students were asked to think about the things that would be important to them when choosing a place to live.
“They were then introduced to the Bristol Temple Quarter area and invited to design and build something in the West In Minecraft world that they believe the BTQ team should consider for the area.
“Combined with other engagement work with communities across Bristol, this is informing our master planning and design work for Temple Meads West and St Philips Marsh. We are proud to work with the University of the West of England’s Inspire Sustainability team on this project.
“The Inspire Sustainability team connects children to real-life, diverse engineering role models to widen participation and aspirations for STEM and green careers.
“We look forward to continuing our work with UWE to engage young people across the region as part of our wider efforts to engage people from across the city-region as we deliver thousands of new homes and jobs through the Bristol Temple Quarter project.”
The regeneration plans include upgrading entrances to the train station and creating two new ones, building a new campus for the University of Bristol and hundreds of student flats, as well as new apartments and offices. The project is expected to provide a boost of £1.6 billion to the region’s economy.