Year 9 Field Trip to the Olympic Park by Carola
We arrived in Stratford (Newham) by coach at around 9 am. We collected our lunches and booklets and were split into two groups. My group gathered on the steps leading up to Westfield where we examined some pictures the guide gave us showing the difference that the Olympic Park had made to the area. After this we carried out a questionnaire on people passing in the street to find out whether they thought the Olympic Park had affected the area well or not overall; we also asked them about additional factors, such as housing and rates of pay. We found out that most people believed the Olympics had made Stratford better.
We next survey involved entering the Stratford Shopping Centre and following a map showing the mall as it was in 2007. It was labeled with all of the shops open at that time, which we used to see whether there has been a change in land use. This was interesting because it indicated the impact on businesses of the large Westfield opening.
We then went for a walk around Stratford New Town (an older residential area) in order to examine the built environment and give it a score out of 60. The housing and neighbourhood was not exactly the most luxurious and overall the whole group gave Stratford New Town an average of 20/60 due to the fact that it was not very clean and the housing quality was not very good. The group then crossed a main road to visit East Village, which was constructed as the ‘Athlete’s Village’ for the Olympics. It was a completely different place with white, glass buildings and peaceful green spaces – this time the average score was 58/60 due to the peacefulness and excellent quality of housing.
We ate lunch and went inside to see Westfield; once seeing it we compared it to the Stratford Centre we had seen earlier, and discussed why it might have caused problems to the Centre in terms of business and people visiting.
Later we went inside the Olympic Park to see all the main landmarks from a hill in the middle. We were walked around the sports stadia and other buildings, and were enlightened as to what they were used for during the Olympics and now. We drew a field sketch from a bridge crossing the River Lea and examined the beautiful park.
Finally, we took a walk through Hackney Industrial Estate, on the other side of the park, in order to compare the Olympic redevelopment with an area that is also formerly industrial but is under-going change. We took some pictures of the colorful and creative graffiti. We examined the land use in this part of Hackney; we noted that there were some art spaces and galleries. After that our tour was finished: we said thank you to our guides and got on the coach to return to school.
Overall, I believe the trip was extremely successful, we all learnt a lot about how much the area had changed since the Olympic Park was constructed and how it has completely changed the community as a whole.
