New Minecraft programme enables children to digitally engineer Bristol landmarks

If you could redesign some of Bristol and Bath’s most famous landmarks, would you change anything?

Children now have the opportunity to completely re-imagine how their city is built thanks to a new Minecraft programme that enables users to digitally engineer buildings, structures and more.

The Digital Engineering Technology and Innovation (DETI) programme team at UWE Bristol developed the project using the popular block-building video game in a bid to help inspire young people to consider careers in science, technology, engineering or maths (STEM).

They partnered with local design and engineering consultancy Atkins and outreach project Science Hunters, as well as Minecraft experts Dr Laura Hobbs and Jonathan Kim, to recreate a to-scale version of Bristol and Bath within the game, allowing children to explore, build, re-design and re-engineer their own cities.

Consultants from Atkins created a programme to convert Ordnance Survey data into a Minecraft world, allowing highly detailed versions of the two cities to be created – ‘the West in Minecraft’.

It features well-known landmarks such as the Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol Temple Meads Station and the SS Great Britain.

What would you change if you could digitally remaster the Clifton Suspension Bridge – photo by Callum Cutler

Liz Lister, manager of the STEM Ambassador Hub West England, said: “Giving young people access to these places and giving them the power to re-shape them, even if it is just in Minecraft, offers them the opportunity to imagine their world as being different to what it is now.

“We hope that planting the idea that we can have some control over our own environment will lead some young people to think about the relevance of design and engineering to their lives, and then perhaps on to thinking of themselves as designers and engineers of the future.”

Minecraft is the second-best-selling video game of all time. Players place and break blocks with a wide range of appearances and properties to build different constructions, they can easily make changes to their work and visualise new ideas.

The DETI Inspire team have been using this new Minecraft world at after-school STEM clubs in Lawrence Weston and Easton as part of a STEM in the Community project funded by UWE Bristol and the STEM Ambassador hub West England, in collaboration with community groups in both areas.

Dr Laura Fogg-Rogers, a senior lecturer in STEM education and communication at UWE, said: “So far ‘the West in Minecraft’ has been a huge success amongst the young people attending these STEM clubs.

“There has been much excitement at finding their own homes within the model city, re-building structures and adding to existing ones. Farms have been built on rooftops as the children have been encouraged to think about how they would re-design their city for a net-zero future.”

A set of school resources to explore digital engineering, using this new Minecraft world, are currently being developed by the DETI Inspire team for release next academic year.

These one to two-hour lessons are currently being trialled with local primary schools, linking activities to the curriculum and drawing on several different subject areas to allow for a cross-curricular and rather unique learning experience.

Main image courtesy of UWE Bristol

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