Home is often referred to as the first space, while work is known as the second space. Everything else – the shop you pop into on the way home, the café where you grab your morning coffee – are known as third spaces. These are the spaces where we build social capital through everyday interactions and develop a sense of belonging. 

Schools are highly valuable and productive second spaces, for both staff and students. Schools have become highly optimised environments. We maximise room usage, timetable every available minute and move quickly from one task to the next. While this makes sense operationally, it can unintentionally squeeze out the moments where relationships are built. Efficiency is essential when working under pressure, but it can sometimes come at the cost of connection. 

Many organisations are also rethinking where professional learning and collaboration take place. Rather than always gathering in conference rooms, some are occasionally taking discussions outdoors, using community venues, or incorporating walking meetings into development time when capacity allows. 

In schools and trusts, time is tight and budgets are often constrained. Booking external venues for training or collaboration is not always realistic, nor does it need to be the default approach. The value of third spaces is not in how formal or expensive they are, but in how they change the nature of interaction and thinking. 

Schools already understand this principle for pupils. Outdoor learning, educational visits and forest school approaches all recognise that environment shapes experience. When pupils step outside the classroom, something shifts – attention changes and learning often becomes more memorable and meaningful. We accept this instinctively for children and young people: that where you are directly influences how you think, connect and engage. 

The question is why we do not always apply the same thinking to adults. 

Staff development and leadership collaboration are still too often confined to formal, structured settings. These environments are efficient, but they can also reinforce routine thinking. Everyone arrives with a role, a screen, a checklist and a set outcome in mind. 

Yet when we change the environment, even slightly, the nature of the interaction often changes too. This does not mean that every meeting needs to be off-site or that schools and trusts should incur additional cost or logistical burden. In fact, in most contexts that would be unrealistic. The principle is not about constant relocation, but about occasional disruption of the familiar. A walking meeting, a discussion held outdoors, or even a shift into a different internal space.