Designing a Welcoming School Canteen to Foster Community and Wellbeing
A school canteen is more than just a place to eat; it's a space where students connect, recharge, and build a sense of community. At Dibber International School in Sollentuna, Sweden, we collaborated with educators to design a canteen that promotes student wellbeing, while fostering an inclusive and vibrant atmosphere for all.
Andreas Broman, a secondary school teacher at Dibber International School, has also noticed the positive impact on the students. He can see that they are calmer in the classroom after lunch, showing clear signs of having relaxed more during their break.
Serving nutritious and wholesome food to students is crucial for their health and well-being. Research indicates that a balanced school lunch can enhance children’s concentration, learning ability, and behavior. They are dedicated to providing nutritious meals to support students' health. Coupled with a newly redesigned dining room, they aimed to elevate the entire lunch experience to promote well-being even further.
Rickard Lundberg is responsible for developing meals at Dibber Sweden and believes that a pleasant atmosphere creates the right conditions for a good meal together.
- We eat lunch every day and the environment we eat in is just as important as the actual meal itself. A pleasant dining space helps open up conversation. Happiness should be something you strive for in an educational space. We think that the teachers' conversations with the students outside of the classroom are extremely important, it's great to have conversation flowing between everyone he says.
As a PE teacher, Anja Knezevic meets the students when they are full of energy and ready for gym or sports, they're not calmly sitting at their school desks. She noticed right away that the new canteen and overall improved break time experience have had a positive impact, both inside and outside the dining area, during class.
"The students are really happy with our new dining room. It's much quieter now when they eat and they genuinely enjoy spending time in the space. As a teacher, I can see that the canteen also positively affects their overall well-being and academic performance," she says.
Community and Socialising
Social studies teacher Andreas Broman eats lunch in the school cafeteria every day and has noticed that the students seem more motivated to go there now. Previously, the dining area was just a place to eat and leave, but now he sees that students enjoy staying longer to socialise.
His favorite aspect of the new canteen is the flexibility in seating options. The old dining area had long tables, now the space has separate tables and chairs of varying heights, allowing for more comfortable and versatile seating arrangements.
As the senior class begin to trickle into the cafeteria for lunch, they quickly spread out across the room. Some head straight for the high tables, while others prefer the rectangular tables with benches instead of traditional dining chairs.
Nellie and Signe, who are in the same class, both agree that the benches are their favorite spot because they no longer have to crowd together.
"I like the new benches because we can sit four on one side and three on the other. That way, no one has to sit off to the side," says Nellie.
The addition of tall flower boxes slightly separating each section of the tables is another feature the students particularly appreciate. These flower boxes not only add greenery and vibrant pops of color but also help create a sense of smaller, more intimate spaces within the larger dining room.
"It's nice to be able to sit a bit more privately with your friends now. Before, everyone sat together, but now we can choose whether we want to sit in a big group or just with a few people," says Azjargal.
So, how did we go about making the school's new canteen a success?
At AJ Products, we work closely with our customers to fully understand their needs, aiming to be a long-term partner rather than just a supplier. Our role extends beyond providing products; we contribute our expertise in design to help principals and teachers focus on their core mission - supporting students and their education.
We place a high priority on ensuring that our solutions align with and support the school's educational goals. For Dibber International School in Sweden, our aim was to enhance the sense of well-being and create a positive lunch experience, in line with their "Good Meal" concept.
Anna Eneroth is project manager for independent schools at AJ Products Sweden and believes that one of our greatest strengths is that we can work with the customer from vision to assembly.
- We are involved early in the planning stage and we often work on developing entire furniture concepts together with the customer and make sure that it matches their profile and brand in general, says Anna.
And for headmaster Jeremy Brooks, it was very important to be able to get help with the furnishing of the new dining hall from start to finish.
- The reason why we chose AJ Products is that we could sit with them from the very beginning and tell them what our needs are. They have been with us every step of the way, right up to where we sit today. My area of expertise is education. It's not about furniture or designing communal dining spaces. But having their expertise means that together we've been able to create some magic in our new canteen.
Developing school meals at Dibber
All of the meals at Dibber schools and preschools in Sweden are developed under one umbrella. The concept has been developed by Dibber with the school's chefs and educators to create meals that are more than just the food on the plate. All food is prepared centrally in a common kitchen and then cooked locally at each school and preschool. In this way, it can be ensured that the food is of the same high quality and nutritional value regardless of which school the children attend.
The concept is based on four pillars: good ingredients, good knowledge, good environmental thinking and a good experience around the food. The time the students and teachers eat should be a calm and pleasant time where there is an opportunity for conversation between the students, but also between students and teachers.
Our interior design proposal in brief:
With a mixture of different seat heights, sections and a calm color scheme, we created a pleasant and inviting dining area that both adults and children can enjoy for many years to come.We can help you furnish your canteen or school dining area
Do you need inspiration or help with a project to improve the lunch room at your school? At AJ Products Ireland, our Project Design Team are happy to help you in fitting out a new school or redesigning existing spaces.
Send us an email or call us on 01252 359760
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