What the world needs now

Why are young people not entering our profession? Or a more interesting question to ask is how many Landscape Architects does our economy need?

If we can understand the latter, we can then perhaps work on addressing the former.

Landscape Architecture is a beguiling mix of biology, engineering, science, art, and sociology. A Landscape Architect has to be creative yet strategic, visionary yet practical. They hold in their hands the ability to mitigate against the toil on the environment that centuries of overdevelopment, industrialisation and urbanisation have caused. Which in turn has affected the psychosocial wellbeing and health of generations.

Landscape Architects in the UK, have a vital role in helping the Government achieve its ambitious 2050 net-zero target, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that the profession is key to addressing the climate emergency.

Indeed, according to this US student career site, over the next 10 years, Landscape Architects will be one of the fastest-growing occupations, with a projected 16.4% rate of growth during this time period (2018-2028).

The profile of Landscape Architecture has in many ways never been higher, as Landscape Architects are being called increasingly to play a significant part in residential developments, placemaking, urban design or reimagining city projects.

Landscape Architects like never before have a seat at the table and this time are there for all the courses. Rather than just for dessert, as was the way in previous years.

“Landscape Architects like never before have a seat at the table and this time are there for all the courses”

Nobody doubts, that what the world needs now, is innovative green architectural solutions that achieve aesthetic, modern living outcomes whilst ensuring environmental sustainability.

In the urban context, landscape architecture is sometimes confined to the ‘creation of life between buildings.’ But it’s so much more than the bits around buildings.

As copious and comprehensive research studies have shown, humankind needs access to nature to thrive and survive. It’s simple but of course complicated.

So that said, why are generations of eco-aware, politically astute, Greta Thunberg informed young men and women not flocking to become Landscape Architects?

In 2018, the Landscape Institute launched an awareness campaign to try and address this issue. Its #chooselandscape campaign focused on raising awareness of the landscape profession amongst key groups, including pre and Post 16, current university students, and those looking for a career change.

They launched a website, social media campaigns and YouTube videos to entice people to choose landscape as a career. One of the key facets was the introduction of new Apprenticeship programmes and accredited courses at more Universities. How successful has it been?

It’s difficult to say as the campaign is ongoing. But in 2019, the Home Office confirmed that the UK Government had added Landscape Architects to the Shortage Occupation List (SOL). Being on the list offers advantages to circumventing certain restrictions to advertising and employing people from both within and outside the UK, amongst other things.

The Landscape Institute also includes the skills shortage in its lobbing priority 12 key asks document.

The document asks the government to ensure, that ‘access to the skilled and graduate workforce needed for landscape must be a priority for the new government’. (“Landscape Institute | December 2019 12”).

Despite this, Gabby Spencer, a 20-year second-year student of Urban Landscape Architecture at Ravensbourne University still believes the problem is awareness.

People, she believes, especially young people, don’t know what Landscape Architecture is or what its people do. As Gabby puts it, ‘When I tell people the course I’m studying, people are interested but the first question is ‘what is that?’ Gabby only found out about her degree course through a friend who was studying garden design.

She said she had to do quite a lot of, ‘YouTube research to understand what it was that Landscape Architects did’. She also feels that the ‘profession is shadowed under Architecture’.

If awareness is the issue, the solution is to try and get in front of young people, their parents and other key influencers such as Information and Guidance Advisors earlier, as career choices are often made from a very young age.

By Year 10, school students are being encouraged to choose their post-primary choices, whether that be A levels, BTECs or Apprenticeships. To really impact the career aspirations of the next generation, it is important to be there at there as early as possible in their school career.

From little acorns grow big trees, and it is the same with sparking the imagination of young people deciding what they want to be when they grow up.

This is one of the reasons EDLA offers work experience placements to young people, and Eleanor has also attended careers days and spoken at schools to persuade young people interested to think about our industry and why.

Gabby, who is quoted above, recently spent some time within our practice as part of EDLA’s Student Support scheme in partnership with Ravensbourne University. The placement saw Gabby, along with fellow student Aliyah Chaumoo (21), enjoy a two-week paid placement within our studio, in addition to a small grant that will assist them financially with their studies.

Aliyah sums up the point of the experience when she simply said, “I really enjoyed learning from the people I was working with”.

EDLA also works with local schools, offering career talks, workshops, and competitions to persuade young people interested to think about our industry. As Gabby explains, ‘With the climate emergency raging around us. Now is the perfect time for people to choose this path.’

‘With the climate emergency raging around us. Now is the perfect time for people to choose this path.’

EDLA Director Donald Roberts also mentors’ university students at his former University, Kingston.

Eleanor and Donald both run workshops and tutor at the University for the Creative Arts in Canterbury, which is where Eleanor studied her BA in Architecture and was first exposed to Landscape Architecture. “This was a lightbulb moment for me, realising that there was a profession which focused on exactly what I was interested in, but I was never aware of it through school and was encouraged by my parents to do architecture as it was creative, challenging, and academic. Straight out of my BA, I applied to a landscape practice, accepted the role and I have never looked back”

Donald and Eleanor both agree, ‘We, Landscape Architects, are the superheroes of today, we just need to show young people what this looks like, and how they can be part of it. We need our profession to be more vocal and all get more involved in spreading the word.’

 

Donald Roberts and Eleanor Trenfield (EDLA Directors)