Architectural mentor 3: Urban Learners

Urban Learners is a non-profit agency delivering a variety of architecture, art, culture and heritage collaborative projects for young people and communities.

Describe who you are
I set up Urban Learners in 2018 to deliver projects for children, young people and communities. The team is formed of architects or architectural students who have taken a less conventional route to architecture.

What is the aim of your organisation?
To improve opportunities and routes into the creative industries for people from all backgrounds, especially those from diverse and/or overlooked communities. The four lenses that underpin these aspirations are: Create, our bespoke learning programmes; Assemble, our network of inclusive practices and organisations; Curate, making heritage and creativity accessible; and Voices, empowering communities. However, all our programmes overlap. We like to keep inventing and challenging, so that our programmes are pioneering and exciting.

Workshop with school children (photo: Luke O'Donovan)

Are you volunteer-led?
Yes. Our projects are made possible by collaborating with like-minded organisations, who also want to make positive change and create opportunities for their local communities.

We provide volunteering opportunities through partnerships with organisations such as the Camden Highline’s Tracking the Heritage Education Programme and the Grimshaw Foundation. Our workshops enable architects, creatives and students to engage with children and young people in less time than it would take to set up their own workshop.

Do you partner with any other organisations?
Since 2018, we have devised education and outreach programmes for the City of London’s Sculpture in the City annual outdoor exhibition. In 2022, we co-founded the Museum of Brutalist Architecture in partnership with Acland Burghley School, whose home will be at the school’s Brutalist assembly hall.

We work alongside other architectural educators and have connections with many like-minded people. From 2018 to 2020, we collaborated with Neil Pinder to deliver the Celebrating Architecture initiative (Architecture for All). This consisted of day-long architecture workshops at cultural spaces for nine to 18-year-olds from London state schools.

Performance, Architecture and Design workshop at the Royal Albert Hall (photo: Andy Paradise)

What kind of programmes do you run and which has been the most successful?
Our programmes include all types of creative interpretation and learning opportunities, from art installations through to designing city spaces. Our activities encourage learning through play to help young people with making, drawing, sketching, photography or even dance and spoken word. We empower individuals to interpret and interact in the way that they feel most motivated and comfortable.

What role are you filling that other outreach programmes aren’t?
We mainly work with secondary school students, especially those aged 12 to 13. It’s important to engage with this age group, because they’re about to make their GCSE choices and many drop creative subjects. We believe this is resulting in a far less diverse pipeline of creatives to support the UK’s economy. Feedback has shown that participating in our programmes has elevated creativity within schools.

What single biggest change would you like to see in the architecture industry?
Architecture education should start earlier than at university. By this, we don’t mean just architecture but the ‘world of architecture’ – how art connects with the environment and vice versa. We hope the new government can make creativity integral to the national curriculum.

What advice do you give your students who are thinking of pursuing a career in the built environment?
Look at all the brilliant programmes and organisations out there that support young people aged 16 years and over and are interested in the built environment. For example, Open City’s Accelerate programme, HomeGrown Plus and the London School of Architecture’s EPQ. Also, start your own (not school) sketchbook, so you can start creatively interpreting things you are interested in. Go to as many free creative and cultural activities as you can and be curious!

Questions answered by Urban Learners founder Venetia Wolfenden