Jenny Munro is Policy, Practice and Research Officer at the RTPI
We’ve been talking a lot lately about the future of planning, largely inspired by RTPI President Lindsey Richards whose inauguration address focused on “Planning Our Future”, which has led to the RTPI’s BALANCE initiative to help generate a pipeline of young planners.
This got me reflecting on my own route into the profession. Not a direct route by any means. After completing an English and History degree I had a dream of working in publishing, but somehow found myself working in banking. It was only after moving to Australia and applying for every admin role under the sun that I stumbled upon a job as a town planning assistant. This set me on a new career path – including completing a master’s degree in urban planning, working as a town planner for a land development consultancy, and then back to Scotland where I now work for the RTPI.
I’ve often wondered why I didn’t know town planning was a possible career before the age of 25? And why did I have to travel to the other side of the world to discover it?
I think we can all agree that we need to talk about planning more often, particularly with young people. We are seeing positive moves in Scotland with the Scottish Government’s recruitment “Inspo” days which have helped promote planning as a career, and the tripling of future planner bursaries recently announced by the Minister for Public Finance.
The RTPI is also doing its part with the BALANCE initiative and its new Ambassador’s Toolkit – a set of free materials to help promote planning as a profession to young people.
I recently had the opportunity to use this toolkit at my local primary school as part of their annual World of Work Week. Having confirmed my participation just a few days beforehand, there wasn’t much time to prepare. I looked at the toolkit material for 7 to 11 year-olds and was pleasantly surprised that it included a template of PowerPoint slides and a lesson plan. This allowed me to whip up a decent presentation in about half an hour.
The school assigned me three 30-minute blocks to talk to three classes of children aged between 6 and 8. If I was to draw out three things that I believe made my sessions work well, they would be:
1) Linking the session to a familiar place
I sourced local aerial photography to kick things off. After a few minutes of excited exclamations of “I can see my house!”, “There’s my car!”, “That’s my school!”, we were able to use the aerial image to explore all the elements that make up a place.
Aerial shot of Loanhead ©Lee Live: Photographer (www.leelivephotographer.com)
Night shot of Loanhead ©Lee Live: Photographer (www.leelivephotographer.com)
2) Linking the session to what interests the kids
The Toolkit suggested using video games, such as Minecraft and Roblox, to relate placemaking back to a fun activity the kids are probably already doing. It paid off! It was actually difficult to get the kids to stop talking about what they had designed in these gaming platforms.
3) Using an activity to break up the session
Let’s face it – kids don’t want to sit for half an hour listening to me talk about town planning! I used the suggested toolkit activity and got the kids to draw their own dream towns and then present their ideas. Sweet shops, chocolate shops, houses, roads, trees, rainbows and candyfloss clouds all featured in the dream towns, and the kids were excited to show them off.
The children drew their dream towns
The children also presented their ideas
Overall, it was an incredibly rewarding experience. I’m glad I did it and I highly recommend the experience to all of you.
The highlights were seeing the children’s dream towns, and also the questions they asked me at the end – “do you like your job?”, “how do you come up with your ideas?”, “how many houses have you built?”, “is your job difficult?”. These questions led us down different pathways, exploring concepts like collaboration, the joys (and challenges) of talking to different people about their place, and how the kids don’t need to wait to become qualified town planners – they can start having these conversations right now!
I don’t know how many children I inspired to become town planners – I’d like to think all of them! It doesn’t really matter. In the end, the kids had fun and so did I.
Planning is a rich and diverse profession that gives those who embark upon it a multitude of career opportunities that can shape the future of our world. The more we all take part in these kinds of outreach activities, the more likely we will be to inspire the next generation of placemakers!
