our trainees

Our traineeshiP: Building differently

We designed a Sustainable Build and Landscaping Traineeship, a structured, paid programme dedicated to training young people (ages 18–25) in sustainable design and building, heritage crafts and landscaping skills. Four cohorts of four young people join us for four months each during different phases of the build programme and are separated into earth building, wood & timber framing, sustainable landscaping and planting the garden. Each phase of this build programme is also supported by one of our Young Fellows - who we have trained in Action Research to support our evaluation and creative documentation.

All cohorts differ in focus, but they each engage in reflective practice, learn traditional crafts and building skills, undertake field trips, create a final showcase and learn to facilitate and lead volunteer sessions and community build days. To date, we have completed two cohorts with the third underway, what have we all learned so far?

Cohort One: Earth Building

From May  - September 2024, cohort one focused on the history and practice of cob building, exploring and experimenting with clay, water, and straw. They received specialist training from Earth Building UK and Ireland and attended ClayFest 2024 to explore different uses of cob from experts which included a tour around the brick factory and a tour of various local projects in which clay plasters and unfired clay bricks had been used, including Bellenden Nursery and a 500 year renovation of a timber frame building with clay plastered walls.

Key Achievements

• Constructing a prototype CobBauge Wall

• Learning how to test cob, make mixes and teaching this at facilitated cob community build days with local residents, universities, local organisations and our youth programme the generators.

• Facilitating a Cob workshop at Build Fest 2025 and held a showcase event for partners and funders involving various workshops to demonstrate their knowledge of cob techniques

Cohort Two: Wood & Timber

From October 2024 to January 2025 cohort two specialised in traditional timber skills, including making sweet chestnut shakes and traditional timber stud walling. This cohort also stayed at Wilderness Woods to learn about coppicing sweet chestnut, and visited the Weald & Downland Living Museum to witness these crafts in numerous heritage buildings on the site.

Key Achievements

• Learning to use shave horses, traditional carpentry tools such as froes & draw knives

• Making a bench using traditional hand tools and building woven willow traditional East Anglian Hurdles

• Making sweet chestnut shingles using hand techniques and cladding our kitchen building

• Building the kitchen timber frame using UK grown timber.

CohoRt Three: Sustainable Landscaping

Currently underway, running from August - December 2026, cohort three have turned their attention to the garden, with a focus on learning about permaculture, designing and building brown roofs, building keyhole planters and planting native hedgerow. They deepened their learnings gaining a Permaculture Design Course qualification with our partner organisation Roots n Permaculture. This cohort has also visited gardens by biodiversity expert John Little and Martin Crawford’s Forest Garden at the Agroforestry Research Trust in Devon to help shape their thinking and inform their designs.

Key Achievements

• Designing and implementing a green roof incorporating 4 different substrate mixes, composed primarily of repurposed material found on site at the Story Garden and from construction waste at the Triangle Site. 

• Researching our forest garden: Trainees researched the height, flowering period, growing conditions, and uses of different species to ensure that we selected plants suitable to the condition of the Triangle Site. 

• Bricklaying an accessible keyhole planter in the polytunnel

• Auditing and selecting appropriate plants to take from the Story Garden

Tracking our impact

Since this is our first time running this format of educational programme alongside our build, we wanted to understand how it worked differently. We are working with the team from Tranquil City to evaluate the impact of the traineeship programme on the young trainees themselves. This evaluation process uses a mix of survey and interviews to understand their own feelings about their wellbeing, community and nature connection, their environmental attitudes and behaviours and their skills and knowledge development alongside their overall experiences of the programme. It follows all four cohorts from beginning to end, but some early insights from the first two cohorts have been positive. The results show that confidence after the programme is significantly boosted, more than double across both cohorts.