Mary Richardson reflects on how last weekend’s Festival of the Future brought over 2,000 young people to RIBA’s 66 Portland Place, aiming to break down barriers to built environment careers
Last weekend, RIBA’s 66 Portland Place was filled with something we don’t see often enough in architectural institutions: young people. Over 2,000 of them, to be precise. The Festival of the Future 2025, organised by Beyond the Box in partnership with RIBA, brought together energy, ideas, and a determination to break down barriers to the built environment professions.
The event was the brainchild of Neil Onions, founding director of youth-engagement specialists Beyond the Box, who worked with RIBA education manager Sophie Draper and a wide range of partner organisations to make it a reality. The goal was simple: to inspire and excite young people from all backgrounds about careers in architecture and the built environment, while opening their eyes to alternative routes in.
A space alive with ideas
“It was incredible to see the building come alive with so many young people enjoying a diverse variety of activities with such a dynamic range of partners,” Draper reflected. “It was inspiring to see festival attendees creating an impressive range of outputs from massive structures made from waste materials to digital artwork generated by AI.”
The workshops were diverse, ranging from hands-on model-making with Archimake and Matt + Fiona for younger children, to issue-based discussions led by groups such as DisOrdinary Architecture, HomeGrown Plus, and Black Females in Architecture. Some sessions tackled broader urban themes, like designing cities for women and girls, while others focused on practical support for getting into the profession.
For Onions, the scale of engagement was a triumph: “The festival saw over 2,000 children and young people join us to explore, engage, and shape conversations about the future of the built environment, with many travelling from across the country to attend.”
Young voices leading change
The importance of young people shaping cities was a key theme throughout the weekend. Manijeh Verghese, Mayor’s Design Advocate and CEO of Open City, reflected on the vital role youth engagement can play in urban policy.
“It was wonderful to be part of the community of practitioners working with young people to reimagine who gets to shape the city,” she said. Two workshops, run by the GLA Design Unit and young women from Elevate (LLDC’s youth collective), explored how young voices could help design safer cities for women, girls, and gender-diverse people. “I was impressed by the incredible observations and policy ideas of the participating young people,” Verghese noted.
The festival also provided the backdrop for Open City’s Accelerate Debate on Constructive Criticism in architectural education and practice, which closed the event. “Bringing together such a talented panel of educators, emerging practitioners and progressive thinkers, the conversation left everyone in the audience with much food for thought on what still needs to change to improve the profession.”
Making creative education more accessible
One of the standout moments came from Heatherwick Studio, which used the event to showcase its new In the Making toolkit, a resource designed to help architecture practices deliver creative sessions in schools.
“Any architecture practice can take our ‘how to’ guide and template for a two-hour creative session and use them to run a workshop in a school,” said Matt Bell from Heatherwick. “There are 6,000 architecture practices in England. If each did one workshop every term with a local school, in a year that would provide creative education to 540,000 young people.”
Paying for participation
Ensuring that all partner organisations were financially supported was also central to the festival’s ethos. “Bringing a festival of this scale to life takes a collective effort, requiring time, energy, and, crucially, financial support,” said Onions. “I was committed to making the festival equitable, which is why we fundraised to ensure all our partners were paid for their contributions.”
Support from RIBA, the Greater London Authority, Ealing Council, and many others was instrumental in making this possible. Beyond the logistics, this approach set an important precedent: too often, initiatives to engage young people rely on unpaid goodwill. Paying contributors properly acknowledges the value of their work and ensures that engagement efforts are sustainable.
What next?
Given the scale of enthusiasm, it’s unsurprising that many people are already asking about the next festival. But with RIBA’s upcoming refurbishment set to close 66 Portland Place in June, a new venue will be needed.
Onions is also keen to rethink how the event is funded: “To fund the next festival, I want to test a new way of leveraging social-value contributions through consortium funding. Many local authorities, through tendering processes, ask built-environment professionals to provide additional social value – often in the form of work experience placements or apprenticeship opportunities. Now, these asks can be disjointed or just unattainable for SMEs, but if we worked collectively and collaboratively, imagine what we could achieve.”
That invitation is open now. “There are lots of different ways to help,” Onions says. “I’d like to invite anyone interested in supporting the next festival in any way to get in touch now, so we can all shape the event together – and ensure it reaches even more young people.”
With young people increasingly engaged in conversations about the built environment, the challenge for the industry is clear: how do we turn this momentum into lasting change? The Festival of the Future was a step in the right direction – but it must be the start, not the end, of the conversation.
>> Also read: The built environment belongs to everyone – so why are young voices so often excluded?
>> Also read: Beyond the Box: delivering real social value in the built environment
Postscript
Mary Richardson is a freelance journalist and regular Building Design contributor.
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