Architectural mentors: the initiatives offering training to young people

The architecture industry is changing fast. And so is architectural education and the routes into both. One historic critique of the profession is that it is elitist. Architectural education is not only incredibly expensive (trips, materials, computer software, printing), it’s also long. And once you’ve made it through both undergraduate and postgraduate (a minimum of five years), you’re not guaranteed a job in a struggling industry, nor are you paid well if you do get one.

Yet the industry is learning that to diversify our spaces, it is essential we understand how to design appropriately for different communities. This can’t only be tackled from the top down. It also needs a bottom-up approach: working with young people, both those contemplating a career in the built environment industry and those being made aware for the first time of how the built environment around us is shaped and their stake in this.

Accelerate's summer exhibition 2024 (photo: Jazz Noble)

How can this change be enacted? Through learning paths and opportunities for young people so that architecture at least seems like a potential career. Upskilling is also important. Young people need to be given the opportunity to approach the next stage on a level playing field with their peers. And incrementally, this can lead to a more equitable, diverse environment and industry.

The AJ has interviewed eight fantastic organisations and initiatives (look out for the articles over the coming week) that are offering mentoring and support to students and young people considering pathways into the built-environment industry – and looking to challenge conventional routes into the profession.

Courses and programmes like this are essential for giving an appropriate grounding in the basics of understanding of space and place in people’s everyday lives as well as the environmental, social, economic and political contexts of being a designer. If we can encourage this from the start then it can only prove more beneficial for architecture by improving public engagement and public perceptions.

RIBA Youth Workshop at the Dalston Pavilion (photo: London School of Architecture)

Of course, the list isn’t comprehensive. There are many organisations and individuals across the country who are contributing in some way to helping make our built environment more diverse and equitable through mentoring or bringing young people into the design process. Some of them we have highlighted in the AJ before (see our POoR Collective guest-edited issue, October 2023). In 2022, meanwhile, the AJ100 Contribution to the Profession award recognised the pioneering work of teacher Neil Pinder, founder of HomeGrown Plus, a not-for-profit agency that promotes and champions young architects and other creatives from non-traditional as well as traditional backgrounds.

From the Thornton Education Trust to PlanBEE to London Neighbourhood Scholarship, there are many resources and programmes out there for aspiring built environment professionals or for those just curious about the built environment, of which we list a selection below. Because, as Matt Weir of Placed Academy says: ‘Who the hell knows what they want to be at 17?’