Alternative Practice is a community of young workers and students that are interested in
challenging the boundaries of traditional built environment discipline.

In November we hosted the first Alternative Practice event here at Build Studios. We would
like to give a huge thank you to everybody who joined us and helped us establish a
wonderful community of students and young workers interested in doing things differently.

Our first event was titled Diversions, considering quite simply the things that divert us in and
out of traditional routes such as architecture. Led by our wonderful speakers, Victoria
Collins, Lucia Ene-Lesikar, Dionne Bimpong and Shirin Naveed, we dived into the barriers and
challenges of traditional routes, shared the stories of our architectural deviations and reflected
on how we can measure success differently.

Something integral to this project is that Alternative Practice events and workshops are led
by students and young workers. Conversations like these are often led by those with the
traditional trappings of success. We believe that everybody has something to say, and young
people should be able to access this agency to share their thoughts and stories. This
ultimately shifted the relationship between the speaker and the audience, placing everyone
on the same level and gave way for an exchange of knowledge and experience rather than a
singular monologue of successes. This relationship also allows us, Build Studios, to take the facilitation role and develop new activities and talks directly with the community we were able to establish. We greatly look forward to the next one!