An Inspiring Course in a must-visit City

I have been to many places in the world but I’ve never felt such a deep understanding and connection with a city as I have in Medellin. Every person you meet has been affected by the city’s extraordinary history and has a fascinating story to tell. Through the Red Tree Study programme, we were able to work and engage with local people to learn first-hand how the area has been transformed. It was amazing to watch as the residents could physically draw out on the map every invisible boundary which was once part of a violent territorial war. They would point to the places which were safe and the places they would never pass through for fear of being shot. They told us that every police officer had a price of a million pesos on his head and that the city lived in fear because of Pablo Escobar and the gangs. Medellin today is a very different place and I felt incredibly safe and welcomed both by the co-ordinators and the local people.

I highly recommend the course to design students; the experience of studying abroad for me has been incredibly valuable because it is simply so different to working on studio projects in the UK. Firstly, it is a collaborative effort between students at different stages of their education, from different backgrounds and fields of study and so by studying the issues of Medellin holistically, we were able to have a much more productive conversation about the urban transformation. It also provides a real challenging perspective on what is actually achievable in urban design on the ground when you have to navigate social-political jigsaws. The city and course have reinvigorated me as a designer and inspired me to provoke more positive change.