Six years ago, Lynne Elvins and some of her designer friends and colleagues were discussing life, work and, specifically, the challenges of onboarding juniors into their business.  All agreed that some amazing young people were looking to enter the profession. Equally, all agreed that young people were, more often than not, not fully prepared for studio life when they entered employment; they brought energy, enthusiasm and often subject knowledge and skills but had minimal experience of putting all of this from theory into action. 
 
 This conversation was different because this small group of professionals didn't just moan and then go back to the day job; instead, they decided to act, and Werkhouse was born. https://www.werkhouse.co.uk
 
 Werkhouse provides a live studio experience for thirty young people currently held at Taxi studio in Bristol. Nine South West studios pool their own money to provide food and refreshments over the weekend as they work alongside young people to tackle a live brief provided by a national or local charity. The young people work on the brief over the weekend and then present their solutions to the client on Sunday. Many of these young people then go on to successfully take roles within the industry. 
 
 In this podcast, we talk to Lynne about her career and current role and discuss Werkhouse in some depth. This year's programme runs on the 19th and 20th of November, and without revealing the brief (which is a highly guarded secret until the first day), we discuss the experience that the selected young people will experience. 
 
 This podcast has been recorded with the help of our sponsors, The Edge Foundation https://www.edge.co.uk/ inspiring the education system to give all young people across the UK the knowledge, skills and behaviours they need to flourish in their future life and work and PTC Onshape Providing industry-standard cloud-based CAD to education  https://www.ptc.com/en/news/2020/ptc-onshape-education-enterprise-plan-available-free-of-charge.
 
 We are indebted to The Edge and PTC Onshape for their continued support. 

https://www.werkhouse.co.uk/
https://www.ted.com/talks/lynne_elvins_the_myths_of_gay_adoption?language=en