Open City Accelerate is a free, year-long built environment education program for students aged 16 to 18 from underrepresented backgrounds, running from October to July. Participants attend Saturday workshops, go on site visits across London, and receive mentoring from professional architects, landscape designers, and planners. The program builds practical skills including sketching, model making, casting, and public speaking, while helping students develop portfolios that showcase their work. It is a rare and invaluable opportunity for young people to gain firsthand exposure to careers in architecture and design, completely free of charge.
Creating drawings, paintings, or other visual work to express ideas and observations.
Delivering ideas clearly and confidently in front of an audience.
Breaking down a challenge and working through it methodically to a solution.
Planning tasks, timelines, and resources to get a project done on schedule.
Evaluating information carefully before drawing a conclusion or making a decision.
Core focus of program; students develop sketching, model-making, and design portfolio skills directly applicable to architecture practice.
Program explicitly mentions engineering as a target career with mentoring from engineer professionals and site observation skills.
Program covers planning careers and design skills for the built environment sector with site visits across London.
Students develop creative portfolio through craft exercises including model-making and material experimentation relevant to design fields.
Community Experiences
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