On Thursday, 19 December (4pm-6.30pm) students from the Centre for Alternative Technology Masters in Sustainable Architecture course will exhibit designs inspired by their recent Abermaw community engagement events.

The exhibition at Barmouth’s Dragon Theatre offer an opportunity to see their work and designs in progress for their recent community engagement project where they were tasked to design a space for Abermaw (Barmouth).

Every year the M.Arch student group works with a community on a project and this year they are focusing on Abermaw. Over the last few weeks, they have visited the town, engaging with local people and visiting tourists, as well as having a hub in the Barmouth Town Council funded ‘Tanio Bermo’, to explore and inspire visions of the future.

The community engagement activity also allows students to consider how as architects in training they can engage in dialogue with local communities and gain skills which will prove invaluable when approaching future architecture projects when they work in practice.

Gwyn Stacey, Senior Lecturer on the M.Arch at CAT’s Graduate School of the Environment said: “It’s imperative that our students learn about the process of not just engaging with communities but learning from them and embedding them into the sustainable futures we propose. Often the answers are closer to home than people imagine. Working with communities local to CAT and in Wales offers our students the opportunity to meaningfully engage with often remote communities, putting into action the ‘Act local’ whilst they continue to think Global. It also provides our local communities the opportunity to see their home from alternative perspectives and to bring some new imagination to the future of the place they call home.”

CAT students also ran several public engagement activities to explore collective enquiry and conversations, supported by artist and curator for social change Owen Griffiths, running a ‘Souposium’ in the Wern Mynach Community Garden hosted by the Friends of Wern Mynach, where discussions were shared over food. Ideas, drawings and outputs from the engagement activities will be presented at the event.

Eileen Kinsman, Co-CEO of CAT said: “CAT’s Graduate School of the Environment provides a unique and enriching approach to sustainable education by providing future changemakers with the vital knowledge, skills, and networks to make a real difference in their chosen field. Our ARB Part 2 architecture programme offers students a unique alternative on their journey to becoming architects, where sustainability is embedded in the core of their Part 2 training. The opportunity to engage with communities on a project during the course offers real-world experience that allows them to put their learning into practice, and we’re grateful to the community of Abermaw and Barmouth Town Council for welcoming our students this year.”

You can visit the exhibition at the Dragon Theatre, Barmouth on Thursday, 19 December from 4pm–6.30pm. All welcome.

For more information about CAT’s Graduate School of the Environment and MArch Sustainable Architecture Part 2 course visit www.cat.org.uk/gse