Engaging young people with the built environment: Marc Cairns
Engaging young people with the built environment: Marc Cairns
Author
Introduction
There is much evidence to suggest that involving young people in decision-making processes around the built environment can strengthen communities, leading to improved local facilities, higher local employment, greater access to culture and improved wellbeing and health. But all too often, their voices go unheard.
“Undertaking a Fellowship was an incredibly formative moment for my practice." - Marc Cairns, Fellow
Marc Cairns (CF 2016) is Managing Director at New Practice, a Glasgow-based architecture practice. Since his Fellowship, he has been exploring ways to help young people become active citizens and contribute to design thinking and decision-making around the built environment. Inspired by the youth-led creative programmes he saw on his Fellowship in the Balkans and Central West Asia, he secured funding from the Scottish Government and partnered with national charity Young Scot to launch a pilot project in Glasgow called Shaping Our Spaces. Aimed at 14-21-year-olds, this two-day workshop created a space for young people to get involved and make proposals for improving planning policy in Scotland. Marc shared the results with the Scottish Government, which fed into the updated Scottish Planning Framework.
Marc also set about incorporating his Fellowship learnings into his own practice and sharing them with other organisations across the country. He partnered with The Glasgow School of Art to create a poster-magazine called Playing with Place, which encouraged other organisations in the community to share their impactful work with young people. With the support of the British Council and The Glasgow School of Art, Marc distributed over 2,000 copies across the UK, raising awareness of the value of involving young people in decision-making processes. Seeing the impact of Marc’s Fellowship, one of his former employees, Anna Raymond, was inspired to undertake a Churchill Fellowship of her own, investigating approaches to empowering women from disadvantaged backgrounds to work in the design sector.
Marc’s Fellowship to Albania, Azerbaijan, Kosovo, Serbia and Turkey explored how to empower young people to help build better communities for everyone.
Marc says, “Undertaking a Fellowship was an incredibly formative moment for my practice. It provided me with the opportunity to meet inspirational organisations and individuals and gave me the chance to step back, think and reconsider the value, power and responsibility of my work back in the UK.”
“Undertaking a Fellowship was an incredibly formative moment for my practice." - Marc Cairns, Fellow
Marc Cairns (CF 2016) is Managing Director at New Practice, a Glasgow-based architecture practice. Since his Fellowship, he has been exploring ways to help young people become active citizens and contribute to design thinking and decision-making around the built environment. Inspired by the youth-led creative programmes he saw on his Fellowship in the Balkans and Central West Asia, he secured funding from the Scottish Government and partnered with national charity Young Scot to launch a pilot project in Glasgow called Shaping Our Spaces. Aimed at 14-21-year-olds, this two-day workshop created a space for young people to get involved and make proposals for improving planning policy in Scotland. Marc shared the results with the Scottish Government, which fed into the updated Scottish Planning Framework.
Marc also set about incorporating his Fellowship learnings into his own practice and sharing them with other organisations across the country. He partnered with The Glasgow School of Art to create a poster-magazine called Playing with Place, which encouraged other organisations in the community to share their impactful work with young people. With the support of the British Council and The Glasgow School of Art, Marc distributed over 2,000 copies across the UK, raising awareness of the value of involving young people in decision-making processes. Seeing the impact of Marc’s Fellowship, one of his former employees, Anna Raymond, was inspired to undertake a Churchill Fellowship of her own, investigating approaches to empowering women from disadvantaged backgrounds to work in the design sector.
Marc’s Fellowship to Albania, Azerbaijan, Kosovo, Serbia and Turkey explored how to empower young people to help build better communities for everyone.
Marc says, “Undertaking a Fellowship was an incredibly formative moment for my practice. It provided me with the opportunity to meet inspirational organisations and individuals and gave me the chance to step back, think and reconsider the value, power and responsibility of my work back in the UK.”