Students visit leading sustainable consultancy firm

Year 10 geography students and Green Career Champions from King’s Leadership Academy Hawthornes recently took part in a trip to Arup, an engineering and sustainable consultancy firm. Dedicated to sustainable development, Arup is a collective of 18,500 designers, advisors, and experts working across 140 countries. They work with leading global organisations to address challenges such as climate change, the circular economy, and the preservation of natural resources.

The students explored potential careers and met experts from a range of fields, including an economist who developed London's Elizabeth line, a town planner who developed hydrogen buses in Liverpool, and an engineer who previously worked for Formula 1. Students also heard from a member of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, as well as the Liverpool City Region Freeport Director, who raised awareness of the opportunities for employment within these special economic zones. 

Students were then tasked with teaming up to create a proposal for a community project using a Freeport logic model, before pitching their ideas to a government employee and an Arup senior director. The students fed back that they greatly enjoyed the trip as it exposed them to a range of careers as well as clearly linking to their geography course.

Danielle Spinks, Subject Network Lead for Geography, coordinated the trip and stated: “I believe it was an excellent opportunity for students to explore the range of careers available to them and to speak to people who had different flight paths.  It was also really interesting to see the projects currently being implemented in our city region to improve its sustainability.”