Ryder wins inaugural AJ100 Community Impact award

The award recognises community engagement with an exceptional and sustainable outcome for all stakeholders, with the judges looking for evidence of significant benefits for the community post-completion.

The free skills programme was chosen ahead of: an initiative by EPR to challenge the public’s perception of homelessness; the revamp of a playground for a West London school by Foster + Partners; and a new building for a children’s hospice by Squire and Partners.

In the 2019 academic year, 9,400 students from 54 schools took part in the Ryder-backed Building My Skills, which aims to better prepare students for the workplace by teaching transferable business skills.

In many schools, this programme is now part of the curriculum. It includes topics such as finance, interview techniques and online presence, with input from diverse business partners.

Ryder staff participate as professional facilitators, offering perspectives on career paths and business skills. Each student will take part in five sessions, delivered by professionals over the academic year, culminating in a day of mock interviews.

In its citation, the judging panel said: ‘Ryder has demonstrated a genuine long-term commitment to improving opportunities for young people by engaging with the education system in an effort to bring about positive change.

With its project partners, the practice has taken an idea and grown it over a long period of time to reach thousands of young people every year in the North East, and has ambitions to expand it into other regions in the future.’

The programme, founded by Ryder along with Esh Group, Arup and Turner & Townsend, has been growing over the past decade and there are plans to further expand geographically.

Judges noted that this impressive project would be even more successful if feedback from participants were measured and used to help shape the future content of the Building My Skills course.

The winner of the Community Impact award was announced alongside the first recipients of the new AJ100 Sustainability Champion and AJ100 Sustainability Initiative of the Year on the opening day of the virtual, week-long, free-to-watch AJ100 Festival, which runs until Friday (18 September).

View the full programme to register.

WINNER: Building My Skills

AJ100 Community Impact of the Year 2020 shortlist

• [WINNER] Ryder Architecture: Building My Skills – initiative to prepare school students for the workplace
• Squire and Partners: The Ark children’s hospice, London
• HTA Design: Winstanley and York Road regeneration, London
• EPR: ‘Look the other way’ – homelessness initiative for the London Festival of Architecture
• Foster + Partners: Park Walk Primary School playground

Judges

• Cany Ash, founding partner, Ash Sakula
• Daisy Froud, strategist specialising in brief development, community engagement and participatory design
• Annalie Riches, founding director, Mikhail Riches
• David Saxby, co-founder, Architecture 00
• Pamela Buxton, AJ100 project manager, The Architects’ Journal

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