Meet the inspiration behind UNE's Boilerhouse project

Published 17 April 2019

That play is good for children’s development is widely acknowledged, and donor Chris Abbott wants to ensure that regional NSW children and their families are able to access a great opportunity to play with meaning.

Chris is the Chair of The Abbott Foundation, and previously co-funded funds management company Maple-Brown Abbott Limited in 1984.

Three subsequent biotech businesses listed on the stock exchange later, and his investment in personal wellbeing extends far beyond medical and health companies.

The Abbott Foundation has pledged $3.5million toward the construction of a children’s discovery space at UNE; in the old UNE Boilerhouse on the hill. The striking brutalist building has in recent months undergone somewhat of a makeover in preparation for its transformation into a joyful and welcoming space; an iconic destination for playful experiences and encounters with Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM).

It is highly appropriate that a boilerhouse will fuel curiosity. From 1948 until 1999 the architectural award-winning building delivered hot water heating across campus in Armidale’s cold winters through a coal fired reticulated heating system.

It has since been decommissioned and anticipation is building for its new life as an all-day, all-weather discovery space featuring up to 10 special experiential spaces, a café and function space, a children’s workshop area (for parties too!), amenities, administration and landscaped outdoor play areas.

“Positive play is doing something instead of looking at something,” Chris muses.

“When we visit museums we typically look at something, but in a discovery space we do something.

“Museums have exhibits, discovery spaces have experiences. In doing so, we hope to encourage the attributes of Creativity, Curiosity Collaboration, Confidence and a Can-do attitude. The Five Cs.

“There are plenty of other Cs but that’s enough to get on with.”

Chris has been on the road to Damascus a number of times in his journey to the discovery space concept, but it all started with the brain.

“In 2002 I met Professor Max Bennett at Sydney University. His discipline was neuroscience. He took me into his laboratory and I looked through his microscope at human neurons to the detail of axons and dendrites. I was hooked,” he said.

Seeing where the action took place during childhood development led Chris to serve on the Board of the Brain and Mind Foundation for 8 years.

It was here that he developed a determination to direct his foundation’s funds toward prevention rather than cure; prevention of many childhood and adult afflictions starts at birth with well supported early childhood development including healthy relationships and chances for unrestricted play.

Chris is passionate about investment in prevention in the early years of life; it is well known that prevention is a better use of resources than late stage interventions and cures.

Professor James Heckman of the University of Chicago has dedicated his life to the economics of human development.

His collaborative work clearly demonstrates that quality early childhood development heavily influences health, economic and social outcomes for individuals and society at large.

He has shown that there are great economic gains to be had by investing in these first years of childhood development.

So what has a discovery space got to do with prevention?

Discovery spaces that help cultivate the 5 Cs (and more!) offer novel social environments for children to grow synaptic connections at a rate of at least a million new synaptic connections per second.

Young children are at the peak of their brain plasticity and capacity to learn, and as we get older our ability to learn new things declines.

“This is why a 4 year old can learn Chinese and I can’t,” Chris laughs.

“Children learn for themselves, more than when they are being taught.”

At a discovery space, experiences and encounters with materials, sounds, scents, each other and their families encourages children to use their brains in continually new ways, making synaptic connections by the billion.

It is a space where curiosity is nurtured and a growth mindset is encouraged.

Chris had initially imagined a park or playground. However, after immersing himself in some of the American children’s museums the idea for an inside/outside playscape in Australia was born.

The Abbott Foundation donated $7 million to support development of the Early Start Discovery Space at the University of Wollongong.

Since it opened in 2015 there have been around 400,000 visitors through the door, of whom 67% are children.

On average, a child visits 6 times and stays for 3 hours.

“I like talking to parents and finding out if the kids are enjoying it,” Chris said.

“It’s much more like play than work when compared to biotechnology.”

Both Chris and UNE are confident the Boilerhouse project will deliver long term benefits to children and society, especially in regional Australia where children cannot access the facilities that families in capital cities often take for granted.

The Boilerhouse Discovery Space will also be the base for the UNE’s successful UNE Voyager outreach program, which in 2017-18 visited 197 schools across northern NSW to present STEAM based education programs to over 15,000 students from 4-16 years of age.

“The theory is that if we can encourage children to become more curious, creative and capable, they’ll do better when they go to school,” Chris said.

“Then in time, the University will have a better cohort of students coming into its ranks.

“A children’s learning space within a university also encourages the local community to engage with campus life and the university to remain meaningful within the local area.”

As he has witnessed in Wollongong, he’s looking forward to helping create an engaging environment at the Boilerhouse where children can open their neural pathways and get their synapses firing.

Chris hopes his leadership donation at UNE will be a catalyst for changing how people think and get them to support ground-breaking projects like The Boilerhouse that have the potential to make a real difference for the life prospects of children in regional communities.

“It’s amazingly hard to get people to put their hands in their pockets,” he said.

“I don’t know why. There are only so many oysters you can eat and you only need one hot shower a day.”

The $3.5 million pledge from The Abbott Foundation has activated a fundraising campaign to redevelop the $18 million Boilerhouse Discovery Space project at UNE, which will seek a mix of private donations, philanthropic and government funding, as well as corporate sponsorship to achieve the vision of truly lifelong learning at Australia’s oldest regional university.

To find out more about making a donation, the UNE Alumni website. Visit The Boilerhouse website to follow its progress.