St Ninian’s High School 6th Form students Aimee Freegard and Caragh Maddrell have recently come 2nd and joint 3rd in an essay competition open to all schools in the North West of England and the Isle of Man. The competition challenged ‘A level’ students to come up with their ideas on how they would plan a new city for the next 100 years.
The competition was organised by the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) as part of its Centenary Year celebrations as part of an initiative to celebrate the profession and increase the awareness of planning as an exciting and diverse career.
On Friday 23 May 2014, Aimee Freegard and Caragh Maddrell were presented with their prizes by Isle of Man based Royal Town Planning Institute member - Michael Gallagher, who is the Director of Planning & Building Control at the Department of Infrastructure.
In making the presentation, Michael Gallagher said:
‘When I spoke to students at St Ninian’s last year about the opportunities and challenges of being a planning professionals, little did I expect that I would be encouraging two of the eventual prize winners to enter.This is a fantastic achievement for the Isle of Man – well done to Aimee and Caragh.’
He added:
‘The quality of entries has been very impressive and its good to know that students are thinking about how they would like to shape our future cities. I hope that this encourages all the St Ninian’s students who took part in the competition to take an interest in the future shape of the Isle of Man and the way it is planned. May be some may even consider a career in planning.’
‘ I would like to thank Kirsty Moore from St Ninian’s High School for inviting me into the school to speak to her students and encouraging them to enter the competition as part of their ‘A level’ Geography studies.’
Kirsty Moore, Subject Leader for Geography at St Ninian’s High School added:
‘The RTPI competition offered an exciting and important opportunity to inspire a younger generation and get young people thinking about their environment. It has helpedto engage and stimulate students to think about Planning and the Built and Natural Environment and how we manage this. Students have begun thinking about the Isle of Man, what is good and bad about where they live. They have started to understand what shapes their local environment and the challenges facing communities as they plan for the future, and the students were able to use some of the ideas and theories learnt in their human geography topic ‘World Cities’ to aid their successful completion of both the essay and city plan design aspects of the competition.'
