Insight
The Lancaster Academy STEM careers workshops
7 Mar 2022
Faye Haldane
Director
I was delighted to be representing Pick Everard at a recent series of workshops to more than 120 pupils offering an insight into careers within the construction industry, as well as hearing about the ongoing redevelopment of a local disused site in Leicester.
The workshops, which were co-hosted by Leicester City Council and Levitate Architects, were aimed at Year 7 pupils at The Lancaster Academy to understand the importance of architecture in creating great places, as well as highlighting the vast range of roles available in the construction industry. The sessions challenged the pupils to imagine they were an architect and design their own individual ‘happy place’ to inspire the students’ creativity.
The Southfield and Newry site, which is owned by Leicester City Council, is not far from The Lancaster Academy and the Council plans to redevelop the site into properties to provide more housing for its growing population. The project is expected to take a couple of years and the pupils will be invited to revisit the site to see the progress being made.
It will be exciting to have the opportunity to engage with the Year 7 pupils over the life of the project to explain the redevelopment and in particular, invite them back to site to see and hear about key project milestone reached. As a multi-disciplinary consultancy, we’re in the perfect position to be able to demonstrate the wide variety of career options within the industry.
Engaging and educating young people in just how fulfilling a career in any STEM subject can be is something that’s incredibly important to us at Pick Everard. It’s also especially important to be inspiring young people to consider a career in the industry to tackle the ongoing skills gap and bring new talent into the sector to drive it forward for the future.
Lauren Tyrell, senior development manager at Leicester City Council, said: “Engaging with the communities around the work we are doing is really important to us and the workshop with the students at The Lancaster Academy was a great success. Being able to showcase what is going to happen with this former school site and the positive impact it will have on the area was brilliant as we seek to provide more housing for local people.”
Spencer Guy, director at Levitate Architects, said: “We had an absolutely fantastic time with the students showcasing both what they can expect to see happen from the initial design stages to the full development of the site, and what it means to be an architect.
“We find that young people are brimming with exciting and fresh perspective on problems, so to spend time engaging with them was as helpful for us as I’m sure it was for them.”