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In 2026, as part of our baby room project, we put on vision-building workshops to understand what the sector ideally wants baby room provision to look and feel like across England. Vision building generates a shared understanding of what matters when delivering high-quality provision in baby rooms and helps unite baby room educators and nursery managers around a common purpose.

Some nurseries and local authorities are developing their own local visions for the baby room. In doing this, they are working to bring together baby room teams at a grassroots level to lay a strong foundation for high-quality provision. In this blog post, we explore how Cornwall LA is developing vision-building workshops to support nurseries in developing a clear, shared vision for their baby rooms.

Why is Cornwall LA putting on vision-building workshops?

Val Buckingham, EY Consultant at Cornwall LA, believes that baby room teams need to be driven by a clear, shared purpose. When baby room teams have a strong understanding of what they’re working towards, everything moves in sync towards the same goal. The purpose permeates everything from one-to-one interactions with babies and families, to care routines, to group activities.

Cornwall’s vision-building workshops aim to help baby room teams develop this shared sense of purpose in a collaborative and creative space. As part of this, they are encouraging baby room educators and baby room leaders to attend alongside nursery managers. When whole teams are involved, the vision comes from everyone rather than just a single manager or leader, and everyone is on board with the vision and what they are aiming to achieve. It also supports the buy-in of the wider nursery to the baby room’s vision, enabling efficient, holistic, and sustainable changes to occur. Cornwall LA believes that establishing this shared vision for the baby room will improve the quality of the provision. This is important to ensure good outcomes for babies, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

What will the vision-building workshops involve?

In planning these vision-building workshops for baby room teams, Val raised a few questions she believes will be important for teams to reflect on:

• How do we see babies? Is the baby room a space for growth and learning, or is it a space to hold babies until they are ready for the toddler room? Val hopes that, through these vision-building workshops, Cornwall LA can spark conversations where baby room teams and nursery managers acknowledge and value babies as competent learners with agency, and that the visions that teams develop will align with this.
• How is the baby room unique from the rest of the nursery? In the workshops, Val hopes to prompt baby room teams to reflect on what they want to offer to the youngest learners in their nurseries, making sure that the provision aligns with the unique needs of babies and their families. This will translate into a vision for the baby room.
• How will our vision for the baby room come to life on a day-to-day basis? With a solid vision of baby room provision in place, baby room teams can then shift to generating a shared understanding of what needs to happen on a day-to-day basis to deliver that vision. This will include ideas around pedagogy, how the baby room slots into the wider nursery, and how baby room teams want to work together.

Alongside teams’ reflections on these questions, the vision-building workshops offer an exciting opportunity for teams to be in conversation with each other. What will emerge is not just nursery-specific visions of the baby room, but a wider, more collective understanding of what the baby room is and how it works for Cornwall as a whole.

How will Cornwall LA facilitate their vision-building workshops?

Cornwall LA is planning to incorporate a few elements into their vision-building workshops. They’ll start by sending participants a 5-minute video that offers initial information on the workshop coupled with points to reflect on prior to attending. The aim of the video is to get people thinking about two key questions:

• What does it feel like to be a baby in your nursery?
• What do these particular babies need from you to learn, belong, and thrive?

Then, Cornwall LA will host in-person workshops across the county for baby room teams. Due to the LA being spread out across many rural areas, Val acknowledged how important it is to offer multiple sessions in a variety of locations to ensure as many baby room teams as possible are able to attend. Each hour-long workshop will be held in the evening in partnership with local baby hubs to build on engagement from that initiative.

Have you hosted vision-building workshops for the baby rooms in your LA? Has this blog sparked you curiosity about hosting some? Share your experiences and ideas in the comments below!