Nawratek, K.B., Little, C., 2026.

Introduction

This introductory chapter situates Pedagogy as Creative Practice within the rapidly changing landscape of architectural education in the UK. It examines the combined pressures of accreditation reform, financial precarity, widening inequalities and the increasingly neoliberal organisation of higher education, arguing that architecture schools occupy a particularly exposed position between creative inquiry, professional regulation and institutional demands. Against this context, the chapter frames pedagogy as a creative and potentially resistant practice: a space in which experimentation, dialogue and critical reflection can challenge increasingly instrumental models of education. It traces the development of the collection through an exploratory workshop that brought architectural educators together to read, debate and respond creatively to key pedagogical texts, establishing a collaborative and curatorial methodology that subsequently shaped the book. The chapter locates the collection within a longer history of debates on architectural education, recognising Radical Pedagogies: Architectural Education and the British Tradition (Froud and Harriss, 2015) as an important contribution to the field and continuing that discussion ten years later, under significantly intensified institutional and professional pressures. At the same time, it deliberately shifts the geographical focus of the debate away from London towards the north of England. It argues for the continuing importance of protecting spaces for imagination, experimentation and critical inquiry within architectural education.