Over 70 female Year 9 students from five secondary schools across Huntingdonshire attended an event at Alconbury Weald (on 19 March) to find out more about the wide variety of career opportunities that are available in development, construction and the built environment.
The Make Your Mark event, designed to inspire young women to pursue a career in the development industry, showcased some of the roles and skills it takes to create a new place like Alconbury Weald; from engineering, planning and design to landscape and sustainability, project management and marketing.
Organised by Urban&Civic, master developer for Alconbury Weald, and supported by the development’s design team - including planners David Lock Associates and landscape and ecology experts Bradley Murphy Design - the event helped the students understand what it takes to create attractive, healthy and sustainable places to live.
Following talks from women in senior positions within the industry and a tour of Alconbury Weald, the students were given an opportunity to create their own community. Using a bespoke software platform that helped them consider everything from sustainability and climate change to heritage and ecology, they designed and presented their perfect place to live. The session also provided information on the different career options and pathways into these roles.
The students also took part in a design workshop on Runway Park, Alconbury Weald’s next strategic green space, to help shape the plans coming forward and ensure the team develop outdoor space that works for young people. The day concluded with promotion of opportunities for summer placements, details of career paths and graduate apprenticeships and other career paths into the industry.
The Make Your Mark event was a real eye-opener for our students, who had a great day and have come back absolutely buzzing and full of excellent feedback. It was fantastic for them to hear from female role models in senior positions within the development industry and I think it’s fair to say that some of our students will be looking into careers that they hadn’t previously considered.
Corinne Wheeler, Associate Assistant Principal at Sawtry Village Academy