High school students learn from industry professionals at Inside Design camp

The program is a way to introduce young people to what design is. To give them the opportunity to get out and actually learn with hands on, with making, and to interact with professionals. This year, we had architects and interior designers from the firm Baskervill in Richmond. Students started working with a project that was just theirs, it was solely theirs. And then throughout the week, conversations began more and more with the people around them. To where in the end, it was nothing but a collaborative effort to build a city, but it was a group of voices that it takes to build the city. I started working at Baskervill at about 2019 and I graduated from Tech in about 2016. My goal was just to gain more experience in the educational field and building a curriculum. Just being quick on my feet and being able to trust my team and be able to come back every day and just relook at, okay, what is the focus of this day ? Where are we trying to go with it ? How are we trying to connect this day to that day ? What do we take out that we were planning to do at the end of the day? What's super important to make sure that we get to the end goal, which is getting them to collaborate, work together, and develop their own city. One of the goals for the program is to let the high school students know that design is solely an individual activity. That design is a community activity. That design happens at a community level that we have to work with, other people, that we have to make compromise. For a lot of them, this is like the first time they've done some form of like artistic expression like this. Or, this is the first time they've modeled or learned how to like, shade and draw things properly. There's always going to be some pushback and like hesitation at first just because it's a new environment. But as we progress through the week, and especially on the last day when we started modeling the city blocks and everything, I didn't find a single kid who wasn't like excited and just like ready to get into the thick of everything. Getting just thrown in with this large of a group. It really was eye opening to just see how that I know the professors put in every year for their students and just how much I wanted to give back and make sure I did that same passion that I know that the professors gave me when I was here. Seeing the kids really pick up on the lessons we were trying to teach them and taking it and moving with it and changing directions, taking it on their own. I was very happy. It's been awesome. This is my second year doing it. It's just like such an enriching experience to work with all these students and just see them like, develop and hone their skills throughout the week. It's just really inspiring to see like these designers that are going to be forming our communities.