New Future

New Future was founded with a core ambition in mind – to help grow a construction and design workforce equipped to build within the context of a climate crisis. We develop training models to build sustainable construction skills for people who work, or want to work, in the built environment. We deliberately integrate design and trade professions into our training programmes – crafting a curriculum that teaches designers to be builders and builders to be designers. We hope to build economic autonomy around this upskilling, supplanting the shortfalls of traditional funding with commercial activities that also help promote building better. We want sustainable construction education to be free at its point of access, with apprenticeships and learning schemes paying people a real living wage. How will we do this? Our central output will be to launch a comprehensive training programme called the New Future Construction School – a model that will equip construction sector participants with skills needed to preserve the existing, and decarbonise the future, built environment. Who will it impact? New Future will be a supportive space for new and existing construction students and professionals. It will help this community become more symbiotic, training individuals to become versatile, multi-skilled experts in the practical application of bio-based and circircular materials. Hands- on retrofit and heritage training will be delivered through live projects, including rehabilitating disused and at-risk buildings for community benefit. Where will we work? We are a Glasgow-based team, but our aspiration is to have national impact and, hopefully in time, become a legitimate voice within the global effort to decarbonise construction activity. To begin with, New Future will work to bridge the widening sustainable construction skills gap in Scotland, advocating for a low-carbon, circular material culture in construction.