PLACED

📣 We’re excited to be heading to @ukreiif next week! The whole PLACED team are heading to Leeds for #UKREiiF2026, along with some of our brilliant PLACED Academy Alumni and PLACED Ambassadors. 💬 If you’re attending too and would like to catch up, connect or grab a coffee, please drop us a message. See you there! 👋 #PLACED

✅ ROTATE DEBATE Huge thank you to everyone who joined us earlier this week for ‘Rotate Debate: Cutting through social value buzzwords’ at Liverpool Central Library. 🤝 It was lovely to see so many of our collaborators, friends and supporters! Thank you to everyone who took to the stage to join the debate, lots of valuable insights and conversations shared! #PLACED 📸 @wedgecollective

⚠️ APPLY NOW! APPLICATIONS FOR #PLACEDAcademy STUDIO 2026-27 ARE NOW LIVE!
 🎓 PLACED Academy Studio is our free-to-access flagship programme for 14-18 year olds. The programme brings young people closer to the built environment through hands-on design workshops, live projects and opportunities to learn from industry professionals. Delivered over nine months, our Studio Academy helps participants build confidence, develop creative and collaboration skills, and gain real insight into careers in the sector, all while they are still in school or college. 📆 The programme begins with a four-day summer school, taking place from 20th July 2026.

📣 If you are in year 9, 10, 11 or 12 and interested in design, architecture or places, PLACED Academy Studio is for YOU! Please head to the link in our bio TO APPLY NOW! 🔗 #PLACED

🎓 We are very proud to announce that some of our wonderful PLACED Academy Alumni and Ambassadors will be joining us at @ukreiif 2026 next week! Huge thank you to the UKREiiF team and Future Impact Board for providing tickets to our young people and making this opportunity possible. 🤝 Catch the PLACED team along with: Rui Jang, Grace Baker, Lilia Hakem, Diya Calleechurn, Paula Malinowska, Edward Holmes, Aaron Hancock, Faisa Nawaz, Caitlin Leonard, Olivia Szafraniec, Barakat Olagunju, Haneen Mansour We’ll see you there! #PLACED

👋 Jo, PLACED Director Jo has over 20 years’ experience working in the built environment, with a background in regeneration, housing, and environmental design. Jo founded PLACED in 2011 out of a desire to develop young people’s understanding of the towns and cities in which they live, and how the quality of design impacts the lives of all residents. We caught up with Jo to chat about what she loves most about her role and the type of places she wants to help create! #PLACED

🎓 #PLACEDAcademy SPONSORSHIP 2026-27 We are very excited to welcome @definearchitects onboard PLACED Academy 2026-27, as Bronze sponsors! Thank you to the team at Define, we are very proud to have you onboard for the upcoming Academy year and very grateful for your support across our Academy programmes. To find out more about Define Architects, please head to: 🔗 definearchitects.co.uk For information on joining our network of Academy sponsors, please visit the link in our bio 🔗 #PLACED

📣 FINAL FEW TICKETS REMAINING! Catch the PLACED team at Liverpool Central Library TOMORROW, for ‘Rotate Debate: Cutting through the social value buzzwords’. Join us ahead of @ukreiif for a debate with a difference! 🎤 Our panel rotates, each speaker is allotted a few minutes to tackle a new question from the audience or debate a previous point made. Never been on a panel before? No problem! This event provides the opportunity to have your say in a respectful and considerate environment. We’ll be focusing on cutting through social value buzzwords. How do we ensure we’re delivering real social value? We’ll explore what works, what doesn’t and how we can work together to ensure it covers all, while not strictly being short term intervention. We’ll explore how organisations are creating big impact and how the sector responds. ⏰ TOMORROW! TUESDAY 12TH MAY, 4.30PM-7 PM 📍 Liverpool Central Library Tickets are FREE with the option to choose a participating or audience ticket. Secure yours now, please DO NOT MISS OUT! Head to the link in our bio 🔗 #PLACED

🎓 #PLACEDAcademy SPONSORSHIP 2026-27 We are very proud to welcome Hive Land & Planning onboard PLACED Academy 2026-27, as Bronze sponsors! Huge thank you to the team at Hive for their support across our 2026-27 Academy programmes, we’re very grateful to have you onboard! To find out more about Hive, please head to: 🔗 hiveland.co.uk Interested in joining our network of incredible Academy sponsors? Please visit the link in our bio for further information 🔗 #PLACED

📣 APPLY NOW! APPLICATIONS FOR #PLACEDAcademy STUDIO 2026-27 ARE NOW OPEN! PLACED Academy Studio is our FREE flagship programme for 14-18 year olds. Join us to take part in hands-on design workshops, input into live projects and learn directly from industry professionals. The programme helps to build confidence, develop creative and collaboration skills, and gain real insight into careers in the sector, all while you’re still in school or college. ⏰ APPLICATIONS CLOSE SUNDAY 7TH JUNE 2026 Head to the link in our bio to APPLY NOW! 🔗 #PLACED

🎓 GOLD SPONSOR DESIGN SESSION: AtkinsRéalis Back in April, we delivered our final Gold Sponsor design session of 2025-26 Studio programme, which saw our young people work with AtkinsRéalis to feed their ideas into Liverpool’s transport triangle. This workshop focused on better connecting Liverpool Lime Street, Liverpool Central and Queens Square Bus Station, offering our young people the opportunity to explore city-scale wayfinding and connectivity. ✅ Our cohort: • Worked alongside the AtkinsRéalis team to learn about transport management in cities, exploring the ‘transport triangle’ in Liverpool and the key challenges of navigating complex urban hubs. • Considered the experience of different users, from daily commuters to tourists, identifying where navigation feels confusing or stressful, building wayfinding strategies to simplify and improve journeys. • Applied urban design principles to real-world principles, focusing on movement and the public realm and used modelling to propose structural solutions, alongside branding and digital information strategies to support navigation and user experience. Through this session, young people gained a practical understanding of how transport planning and urban design overlap, while contributing ideas to the future of Liverpool’s transport triangle. 🤝 A huge thank you to AtkinsRéalis for sponsoring and supporting the session. Thank you to James Wright, Luke Ellis and Harry Walsh of AtkinsRéalis, and PLACED Ambassadors Nicola Donnery and Grace McGrath for giving their time to support the design session, providing advice and encouragement throughout! For more information on PLACED Academy, please visit the link in our bio 🔗 #PLACED

Last week, PLACED Director Jo Harrop and Senior Project Manager Lily delivered a Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) webinar, ‘Bringing young people together to make better places: a case study from PLACED on youth voice’. 🎓 Jo and Lily were joined by Bethal for the session, a participant from our recent Rochdale Partnership Academy. Bethal spoke about her experience of being asked about her town centre as a local resident and discussed the impact participating in the Partnership Academy has had on her as a young person exploring career pathways into the built environment. A reminder that when we invite young people into these conversations, the impact goes both ways! 🤝 Huge thank you to Gemma Hyde for inviting us to share our work and to the wider TCPA network of local authorities, planners and third sector partners for tuning in! #PLACED 📸 @wedgecollective

📍 PROJECT: Wirral Bus Network Our Wirral bus network community engagement took place over 4 weeks between October and November 2025, to gather feedback from residents and members of the public. This community engagement formed part of Liverpool City Region Combined Authority’s broader franchising programme and sought to collect feedback on bus services and identify potential future improvements, ahead of the transition to franchised bus services in late 2026. ✅ On behalf of @lpoolcityregion , PLACED facilitated 26 events across the @wirralcouncil area, comprising of 12 meetings with a range of community groups and 14 public drop-in events. In total, 1,469 people were engaged through meetings and drop-in sessions! The feedback gathered will inform the future bus network. To find out more about this project, please head to the link in our bio 🔗 #PLACED