The Mayfield Project

Welcome to the 2024 – 2025 Mayfield Cohort

In this clip, meet the bold 2025 Mayfield cohort as they answer the question: “Why is your research so important?”……Trust us – their answers will shift your thinking

Join us on the final frontier of LEA 3001: A Learning Space Odyssey conference, Friday 9 May, as the 2025 Mayfield Project 2025 present their powerful, thought provoking keynote that reframes how we design and evaluate learning spaces – from the inside out.

These Mayfielders are asking:
– What if we embedded continuous feedback loops into the design process?
– What if teachers, students, and communities helped define success — on their terms?
– And what if evaluation was actually quick, easy, and impactful?

Whether you’re an architect, educator, or just curious about the future of learning – this is the presentation you don’t want to miss.

Forget box-ticking evaluations that happen before construction or long after the learning begins.

Sydney. Three days. A gathering of architects, designers, and educators. The goal? To uncover what truly makes a learning environment successful.

This is The Mayfield Project 2025.

The focus centered on human interactions. A crucial realisation emerged early on: Success needs to be far better defined at the start of a project. Schools invest millions in buildings, but how often do they truly measure whether those spaces deliver the experiences they were meant to?

And how often is community consultation curtailed, cancelled or plain ignored in the name of cost saving or urgency, instead of being seen as a tiny proportion of investment that makes multi-million-dollar projects more likely to succeed in the long run?

That led to a tougher question: Who gets to define success? Architects admitted they can lack the credibility to evaluate the success of learning and teaching in the spaces they design. And educators often expect designers to arrive with answers, not more questions.

So rather than jumping straight into designing spaces, our teams started to define the learning experiences that could take place in them. Because in the end, a building is only as successful as the learning that happens inside it.

The Mayfield Project 2025 isn’t about drawing up blueprints. It’s about challenging assumptions, reframing the conversation, and designing from the inside out.

Article by: Ewan McIntosh, Founder & CEO – NoTosh, Scotland

We are thrilled to extend a warm welcome to our 2024-2025 Mayfield Project participants, fondly named “Mayfielders”!

We received an overwhelming number of high-quality applications from across Australasia, including participants from all states and territories in Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia. We are excited to announce a dynamic and diverse group of 16 professionals who have joined our 2025 cohort.

Our Mayfielders represent a rich tapestry of professions, including architects, educators, project officers, designers, and landscape architects. This variety not only enhances the collaborative nature of our project but also enriches the learning experience for everyone involved.

We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to the employers of each participant, as they support these impressive young professionals to fully participate in this unique research initiative.

The project kicked off with their first meeting in late November 2024, where participants will began to explore innovative solutions in learning environments. Additionally, we are excited to share that approximately 50% of our Mayfielders attended the 2024 Regional Day Out in Adelaide | Tarndanya. It was a fantastic opportunity for our community to engage and network.

The Mayfielders will be presenting their research project at the 23rd Annual Regional LEA Conference “LEA 3001: A Learning Space Odyssey” in Brisbane | Meanjin in May 2025, keep your eyes on our website and on our socials and grab your early bird registration to this conference, as the Mayfield Presentation is an event you absolutely need to have in your calendar to attend.