We’re delighted to announce that our #PLACEDAcademy 2024-25 Sponsorship offers are now LIVE! In our fresh new branding (designing by our participants themselves), we’ve put together a brochure of all the opportunities and packages available to support us with delivering the free-to-access 10 month programme with young people aged 14-18 across the North West.
✨ Want to enable young voices and inspire the next generation of built environment professionals? ✨ Have a live project that could use some input from our cohort? ✨ Want to partner with a leading social enterprise committed to challenging misconceptions about opportunities and strives to break down barriers to the industry? ✨ Deliver on social value outcomes? ✨ Align with the Levelling Up agenda and contribute to changing perceptions of place?
We have a range of packages starting from just £1,000 to be a sponsor. You can upgrade to Silver, Gold or even Academy Partner! 🥇
Want to find out more about what the #PLACEDAcademy sessions can deliver? Visit our news page to see what we’ve been up to.
The PLACED Academy is a proud #TET Future Generations Award for Long Term Youth Programme. The impact of the Academy has been fantastic, with an impressive reach which will now go even further with the introduction of the #PLACEDAcademyAlumni.
View the brochure here or email info@placed.org.uk.
On Wednesday 7th February, our good friend Jodie Greenwood from WEDGE Collective delivered a skills workshop focused on graphic design and branding. Jodie shared her journey from A-Levels to running her own highly successful creative agency with an honest account of the challenges and opportunities she’s experienced over her career to date. We were also joined by Fiona Finchett, a content creator from Planit who also gave the young people an insight into her own career trajectory, highlighting the similarities and differences between her own path and Jodie’s. The main difference being that Fiona works as an in-house designer for Planit and Jodie works with a wide range of clients. It was a great start to the session to hear these two amazing creatives discuss their experiences and share insights with our young people.
Jodie shared a variety of examples of her work for diverse national and international clients, from sports to fashion and the built environment, discussing a few of her creative choices along the way. We heard how Jodie works to create a logo, from receiving the brief to sketching initial ideas, and how she researches and develops her ideas further with colour palettes and multiple iterations to present to the client.
Together, we looked at case studies of famous logos’, paying attention to colour schemes and typefaces and how they’ve evolved over time. Our cohort were then tasked to with simplifying a logo, they had to choose one out of five options: Gorilla Glue, Fruit of the Loom, Wikipedia, Sierra Nevada & Cadillac. This wasn’t an easy task but there were some great versions made by the group. It also fed perfectly into the main activity of the session.
We briefed our young people with the challenge of the evening – to refresh our PLACED Academy brand! We wanted them to keep our main logo and outline but differentiate the three strands of the Academy programme; the Academy, the Academy Alumni and Partnership Academy. They could do this through their colour palette, patterns or something else entirely. The brief explained that we would like the refresh to appeal to young people but also to our sponsors, with the ability to work across multiple platforms/ and formats. This was the first live skills session within the Academy programme, where our young people had the opportunity to directly influence a project branding and see their work being realised.
The young people broke into groups and worked brilliantly to refresh the Academy brand. Once they had finished, Jodie scanned all their ideas and worked to combine and merge their suggested typefaces, colour palettes and combined various logo suggestions, to produce our updated and finalised branding. We were blown away by our young people’s creativity, ideas and insights and we couldn’t be happier with the outcome. Our refreshed brand is now made by young people for young people and perfectly captures the vibrancy they bring to every session. We have already begun to use the updated branding behind the scenes in our newest sponsorship brochure which looks fantastic, as well as incorporating it into our website and shortly, our socials.
The session was a great example of how transferable the design process is – whether designing a logo or a building. The group created some incredible, creative designs in a very short period. Massive thanks to Jodie Greenwood from WEDGE Collective and to Fiona Finchett from Planit for sharing their expertise with our young people.
We’ve officially begun the PLACED Partnership Academy with The Regenda Group, M&Y Maintenance and Construction and The Learning Foundry with the first set of workshops across the February half term!
The programme brings together young people aged 14-18 from Wirral and Liverpool to explore the differences and similarities between the areas they live in, thinking about the communities and their needs and wants, whilst also exploring the different careers available in construction and built environment industries!
This half-term was split into Liverpool and Wirral applicants to focus on the developments happening in each area. In Liverpool, the young people focused on the development of Grove Street, whereas in Wirral they focused on New Ferry.
We are not just building structures; we’re committed to building futures. This programme is a testament to our belief in the potential of young people and our commitment to the communities we serve. By partnering with PLACED, we’re offering young individuals from Wirral and Liverpool a unique opportunity to explore careers in construction and maintenance, while also empowering them to make a tangible difference in their communities. Our aim is not only to open doors to new career paths but to inspire a new generation to dream big and contribute creatively to the development of their neighbourhoods.
Chris Mellor, Construction Director of M&Y Maintenance and Construction
Across both programmes, the sessions focused on the new developments with presentations from Regenda, M&Y, shedkm and John McCall Architects about why the project is happening, what its aims are, its design considerations and why it’s important to involve young people. We took participants on-site to conduct a site analysis to better understand the current challenges and the opportunities of the new schemes and their ability to provide the future residents with a better quality of life. Once back from site, each cohort had to consider the diverse needs of the local community and assign different priorities to each. Thinking about their community, they then created visual representations of their site’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Some of the groups created collaged posters reflecting the strengths and opportunities, others created plasticine tress with ripe fruit bearing the positives and rotten fruit bearing the negatives, all very creative responses!
The second day moved onto an introduction into scale. They worked in pairs to complete a few tasks centred around scale, to help prepare them to create a scaled 3D model of each development and surrounding context at 1:500. Working collaboratively, they had to decide their approach, deciding what materials will be used, who made which buildings and how to differentiate the new scheme from the existing buildings amongst other considerations. The Wirral cohort even managed to fit in a CRIT at the end of their session, reflecting on the process, what worked well, what they would change next time etc…
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some of the young people who are on the PLACED Academy programme with us, and I’m looking forward to seeing how they progress. By providing creative and engaging opportunities for people to learn more about place making, we can empower communities to shape the places they live, work and play in, and who knows, maybe inspire the making of some future Development colleagues!
Katie Davies, Head of Development, The Regenda Group
In April, we will bring both groups together where they will discuss and outline their different sites to one another through informal presentations they put together during their model making. We feel incredibly inspired by the young people who took part in these workshops as they gave up their free time over half term to better themselves, learn new skills and work with new people and they displayed a real care and knowledge of their local area.
At The Regenda Group, we’re passionate about providing opportunities for people and raising aspirations through education and training. The PLACED Partnership Academy is a perfect example of achieving these by working together. We have young people who are curious about future careers in the built environment, coming together to build skills and learning about how regeneration is more than just bricks and mortar – it’s about connecting people and place.
Lesley Penton, Partnership Director, The Regenda Group
Across the workshops, we had industry professionals from Regenda, M&Y and local architects shedkm and John McCall Architects who all attended and offered their expertise, support and guidance to the young people. Thank you to Lesley Penton, John Janew and Katie Davis (Regenda), Chris Mellor, Louise Earl and Alex Williams (M&Y), Joanne Edmunds and Ian Killick (shedkm), as well as Ben Green and Lewis Joinson (JMA).
