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Imagine a public park with lighting and bike trails for easy navigation, a scenic spot to take a first date and an overall design intended to reduce noise pollution and the urban heat island effect. No, these are not the expert ideas of a seasoned urban planner. They are just a sampling of the suggestions from 200+ teens who were asked to build their ideal greenspace out of LEGO® bricks!

LEGO®’s Build the Change program empowers kids and teens to express their hopes for a better future. Participants use their creativity to solve real-world challenges with LEGO® bricks – and it is all achieved via learning through play. As we continue to expand the greenspace on the Science Museum’s campus, we’ve partnered with Blue Sky Fund, a Richmond-based non-profit that provides youth development through outdoor education, and invited them to ideate with us.

Middle schoolers involved in Blue Sky Fund's Outdoor Adventure Club tackled their builds in two visits. First visiting The Green to learn about the existing public art, interpretive signage, native plants and natural rainwater filters before getting their hands on some LEGO® bricks.

The high schoolers volunteering with the Blue Sky Fund’s Outdoor Leadership Institute spent longer preparing for their build: four months to be exact! These students worked with the Science Museum’s Education team to go more in depth on why urban greenspaces are important for mitigating the urban heat island effect, reducing the stormwater system overflows into the James River and increasing levels of biodiversity. These students took photos, made observations, created collages and got hands-on by planting in The Green all before they built their ideal LEGO® greenspace.

Hundreds of LEGO® builds later and we find that many of the ideas these students had were not dissimilar to what all visitors want to see in an urban park. The top suggestions from our teen builders were swings, plants/flowers and picnic tables. Not to be overlooked however are ideas that capture our youthful builders’ unique creativity, like a go-cart track, drums and a “reverse fishtank” (we’re not exactly sure what this is, but it sounds awesome).

Again, LEGO®’s Build the Change program empowers kids to solve real-world challenges while learning through play. We ended up with a slew of solutions for the East Green, a future greenspace project along DMV Drive on the Science Museum’s campus. The question now is, “did these young innovators learn through play?”

At the end of the high school program, one student expressed thanks to an educator for the opportunity to “play with LEGO® bricks.” The student shared that with high school classes, extracurriculars and preparing for college, she hadn’t been able to be creative and play in a long time. To that we say: mission accomplished.