Hillfields Winter Trail

As part of the Masters of Architecture Year 1 course, four students (Arian Horst, Cai Thomas, Georgia Ball, Holly Roberts) assisted by two History students (Harry Withers, Emily Cadden) from the University of the West of England have teamed up with Local Learning to create a Winter Trail as part of the centenary celebrations of Hillfields. Through this project, the hope is to bring alive stories of the last 100 years to make connections between the past, present and future. 

Through zoom and phone calls, in light of the current pandemic, local residents were able to share their stories and memories of their time in Hillfields, particularly over the winter period. These were then used to identify key themes to allow them to be developed into stops for the winter trail which will primarily focus on how the architectural environment changed over the winter. It also allowed for parallels to be drawn between now and years of the past. 

Using these ideas Minvera Primary School have been tasked with making their own decorations inspired by the residents’ stories. The children will be shown videos teaching them about different winter celebrations before being given a task to complete which will then be turned into some of the stops on the trail or will be used to decorate their own homes. These will include the making of paper chains, lanterns, poems, house models and even developing their own post-WW2 rationed menus