Willmore Iles Architects take our ESG and social value responsibilities seriously and are always looking for ways to build on our extensive experience of community engagement. We pro-actively seek opportunities to develop our insights and so designed and facilitated a creative workshop in partnership with the award winning UWE Green skills programme, which seeks to address the underrepresentation of people from Black, Asian and minoritised young people into the sustainability sector.

Our innovative workshop demonstrated the roles & responsibilities of an architect and how we can reimagine our neighbourhoods to be places where health, wellbeing and green skills are prioritised and integrated into our design process.

We use engaging methods to encourage insightful observations about the quality of place, to create the building blocks for reimagining these areas. Collectively, the overarching themes that emerged included hygiene, health and safety, wellbeing, hostility and forgotten spaces.

The participants picked up on the lack of large, open green spaces and the busy roads surrounding the area meant there are limited safe locations for young people to spend time in.

Working in groups, we developed critical and creative solutions to many of the ‘happenings’ observed during our sketching walk. These included creative reuse of dis-used public spaces, sustainable food and local farming techniques and sustainable transport ideas to demonstrate strategies that promote positive wellbeing for the local community. It was an enjoyable and thought-provoking morning for all!

Meaningful engagement in the built environment is a tool that we use to provide our clients with insight that can really embed a new project into its place to create sustainable communities. Please contact us if you are interested in ways that we can support you to improve your social value ambitions.