This past school year, BSA Foundation architects worked with Boston children on a project called All the World’s a Stage. In collaboration with the Boston Public Library’s Shakespeare’s birthday celebration, students at three neighborhood branches practiced the design process through set design.

In this hands-on series of workshops, students learned about how a play’s setting influences the action and the mood, then used art, mathematics, and language arts skills to create a three dimensional setting for their story. The workshops took place at the Copley, Dudley Square, and West Roxbury branches and are part of an ongoing partnership between the BSA Foundation and the Boston Public Library.

BSA Foundation youth programs engage children and their families in hands-on activities that utilize the design process to provide alternate tools for analyzing and solving problems, encouraging collaboration, and inspiring new ways to think about improving their own communities.

Students first planned out their designs through creative collaboration and sketching. Afterward they began building using recycled architectural materials to create their stages. Sets were made for a range of activities from fighting ninjas, to magical treehouses, to an intricate story of children living in boxcars.