This project explores the impact of providing platforms for school learners to positively express themselves through multiple educational activities, in turn, developing a collective identity through performance. The existing school typologies in Mamelodi East, Pretoria, are found to hinder such explorative and all-round inclusive activities, resulting in the exclusion of many types of learners. Through

a filter of music-making, the architecture of Tsako Thabo Secondary School in Mamelodi East has been assessed to have inadequate spaces and cause a disconnect with the community. Identified through participatory research done on-site, there is an opportunity to investigate the connection between music-making, participation, and architecture as a way of transforming both the social and physical aspects of the school and surrounding community.

The proposed intervention networks between existing nodes of music-making in the community. With a focus on the weakest link of the network, Tsako Thabo Secondary School, an expressive architectural language is used to provide platforms for inclusive and adaptable educational and social activities. This language ripples out through the built fabric of the community and creates a sense of identity through the intersection of music and architecture. The intervention is proposed as the dream and inspiration for change, building directly on the untapped existing potential of the school and community. This serves as a driver to implement small but impactful change within the existing school now: from as little as incorporating The Arts into the curriculum to installing acoustic panels in the classrooms. This project used participatory research in order to identify real world problems and social agents of change within the community. Furthering participation, codesign methods were used to influence the iterative design process to work beyond the single author limitations and remain contextually and socially relevant throughout.