Landscape Institute

We are thrilled to be working with the below partners to bring the landscape profession into the classroom. Check each opportunity for locations and dates you can get involved.

• RHS Green Plan It Challenge. (UK-wide.) A ten-week challenge for Year 8 and 9 students to imagine and design a garden for the school or a community space. Ambassadors get matched with a local school, supporting the students to research and come up with their new design. At the end of the challenge, students will compete against other local schools and present their designs at a celebration event. The next recruitment of mentors will be in summer 2018. (Last year saw two landscape architects win!)
• Welcome to the Green Economy. (London.) Part of Our Bright Future, a youth-led, UK-wide environmental initiative, Groundwork London’s Green Economy workshops engage children in secondary schools across London. Groundwork teaches children about careers in the green sector, provide training and work experience programmes, and even waged work placements for young people who face significant barriers to sustainable employment.
• design…engineer…construct! (DEC!). (UK-wide.) DEC! is an accredited learning programme for secondary-school age students that aims to inspire the next generation of built environment professionals. It uses a project-based approach to apply STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects to current construction industry practices to give young people practical skills and experience.
• PLACED. (Liverpool.) PLACE EDUCATION works with its volunteers to deliver activities that engage local communities, particularly young people, in the built environment, and run education programmes that teach young people about the built world and support entry into professional careers.
• TeenTech. (UK and Europe-wide.) TeenTech works with companies, universities, business organisations and education business partnerships in regions of greater social need in the UK and Europe to run programmes that help introduce young people to the wide range of career possibilities in science, engineering and technology.

Career talks and fairs are some of our most frequent engagement activities you can get involved with and they are an excellent way to demonstrate to young students who landscape professionals are and the variety of work they are involved in. The LI’s Future Talent Manager Poppy Smith will keep you abreast of opportunities in your area.

If you cannot find an opportunity nearby, why not contact a local school yourself and enquire about their next career event? The Landscape Institute commits to attending a range of regional large scale career fairs annually and you can join us each year at:

• UCAS – Create your Future (Autumn)
• National Career Guidance Shows (Spring)
• Geographical Association conference (Spring)
• Skills shows (different locations and dates)

Young people seek ‘inspiration’ rather than information to help them with ideas about their future. One key way of providing inspiration is though work experience and we encourage Ambassadors to set up opportunities for local students.

You can find the latest work experience requests on the Ambassador jobs board. Please also make sure you your practice has ticked the ‘work experience’ box in the registered practice directory so schools can get directly in contact with your company to arrange opportunities. This function can then be turned on and off depending on when you are available to offer such opportunities.

To update your profile, please go to the registered practice directory. If you are unsure of your log in details, please contact our membership team.

Do you or your practice work on school grounds? If you do, this is a fantastic opportunity to engage with the school and their students. Not only is useful for professional purposes, giving you insight into how the end users want to use their space for play and learning, but it also provides a fantastic platform to engage the school and students about the landscape profession.

Our tips on engaging students will give you advice on what to include in your talk to the students, as might the blogs below:

• Nicola Garmory (TGP) and Sam Shaw (Ian White Associates)
• Scott Matthews (Wardell Armstrong)
• Chris Raven (Learning through landscapes)

Engaging students, schools and career advisors about the landscape profession is relatively simple. Below are our top tips to help you increase your impact:

• Keep it simple, yet exciting. Remember that you are talking to an audience who have probably never heard of the landscape profession so you are starting from basics. However do remember that the profession is involved in exciting key 21st-century issues such as climate change, sustainability, health, students are switched on to these so ensure you relate the profession to the bigger picture and the positive impact it has on the world
• Keep it personal. Focus on the work you do or are passionate about. Talking about this will be easier for you and students will be more engaged if they can see you are talking about something you are passionate about rather than reading off a sheet. Also remember to mention the skills that are needed for the job, not just the tasks you do.
• Emphasise the process of the profession. One central thing I have learnt when promoting the profession is that it is good to emphasise the process of the work you do. We often focus too much on the end product and forget that the work that went into it is hard to imagine for many people. If design if your thing, being able to show how your ideas developed is really inspiring and students can match their passions with the work you do- so from initial sketch, to computer work, to a model, to the finished product. Even if you don’t have images of this, being able to talk about it will work just as well. The same can be done for more management or planning aspects of landscape, showing the different ways you have understood and made decisions about how the landscape should be used/ look can be demonstrated just as easily.
• Mention the range of roles within the landscape profession. Some images of the vast variety of landscapes where a professional are involved would be good.
• Engage your audience. Talk with them, encourage them to ask you questions – start by asking them if they know what a landscape professional does is or what they think it is and what might be involved in the job. Ask them what they enjoy at school and show them that there are different roles within the profession for people with different skills.