FLUID Stories | Chloe, mentee
Three years out
I took three years out between my Part I in Architecture at the University of Cambridge and my Part II at University College Dublin, in order to try different things and to work out what part of architecture I was interested in, and whether I wanted to continue down the path as set out by the traditional route. After three years I decided I did want to do my Part II, but I was looking for quite specific things because I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be an architect.
I’m not in architecture specifically anymore. After Part II I moved into cultural programming around architecture, so I was delivering events, exhibitions and installations. I did this for The Architecture Foundation and the RIBA, alongside voluntary work organising debates about architecture with smaller groups.
I’ve always seen my architecture degree as a way of combining lots of interests - history, drawing, and art, history of art, film and literature. For me, architecture is a creative practice, and I think with hindsight what interested me is making connections between things, so after my degree, I decided to move into a more curatorial role, which is what I am doing now.
I saw architecture as a means to build varied skillset. Right from the very beginning I was always aware that I could do other things with this degree as well as follow the conventional track. I saw it as a useful degree with transferable skills and I’ve always had that in the back of my mind. If I were to go on to become an architect it would be my choice, rather than just a path to follow.
I worked in reasonably high-profile design-led architecture practices between my Part I and Part II and since then I’ve worked at The Architecture Foundation for one year and at the RIBA for two and a half years. I left the RIBA in December 2021 and that was when I got a place on the Fluid mentoring programme. At this point,
Getting started with my mentor
I wasn’t really sure where I wanted to go next or what I could do, so mentoring has been very helpful. I started the mentoring programme in January and paired with Yana while I was looking for my next opportunity.
Our first session together was all about introducing ourselves to each other, going over my CV and working out why we had been matched! The second session was spent outlining what I was looking for in a job, why I had left my job, what kinds of jobs I was applying for and why, and how these suited the things I was looking for, and the feedback I was getting.
This was at a time when I was getting rejections before the interview stage, even though I had all the requirements that were listed. It was clear that I was doing something wrong. When I started sharing my application documents with Yana she proposed that I rework my cover letter. Instead of an essay which intermingled all the projects I was working on, my role and the job requirements, she suggested my cover letter should be more strategic, listing projects in the correct order, with an explicit outline of how I’d met the requirements.
Yana also made suggestions about other people to reach out to, that I hadn’t thought about, as well as other roles. Another area we have discussed is my role as a relatively new trustee of a small charity, which has been useful as Yana has met lots of more established trustees through her work.
“It is also good to hear that sometimes we are going through similar things”
Yana was a great help when I didn’t get a couple of jobs that I wanted, and she picked me up and kept me going.
I was looking at lots of different roles and this mentoring year has come at a key fork-in-the-road moment for me. I was analysing all the things I didn’t like about my last role, and what I wanted from my new one.
I thought that I’d get a job quite quickly and that it would be easy, but it wasn’t, so it has been very useful to have someone to talk to, especially as Yana has a lot of experience working in museums, as an architect. She knows lots of museum professionals, she has good awareness of different roles and what they do. It was helpful to talk to Yana when I got a piece of specific feedback citing I had a lack of experience, I felt very down and she just told me straight up that she felt it wasn’t a fair comment as I had lots of experience, which made me feel confident about gauging my own abilities.
It is also good to hear that sometimes we are going through similar things. The lived experience of imposter syndrome, and the frustrations at times around a general work environment or with leadership.
Career Change
I’m now working at the Wellcome Collection and I started there in May. It is a very similar role to my previous one but they call it Live Programme Production, so I am now a producer of events but in a very different subject area. It is also a move into the broader museum sector.
When I got the offer I wasn’t sure whether to accept or to hold out for something that may or may not be offered to me further down the line. I talked it through with Yana and came to my decision. The learning opportunities in this role are higher and much more tangible. I am learning about inclusivity and accessibility in events and cultural programming, both of which are severely lacking in the architecture sector. I felt that in all the places I had worked, inclusive practice was not as genuine or deep as it could be. Wellcome Collection has been a UK sector leader in this area, and I feel this experience will be valuable if I decide to go back to architectural curation.
Since starting in my new role Yana and I have talked about managing my workload, the pressures, and all the things that you think about when starting a new job. She suggested I make notes about my first impressions so that I can look back at them in 6 months’ time and see if they have changed.
It’s important to record the positives as well as the negatives because if I were to go back into architecture, it is the positive learnings around inclusivity that I will take with me as an asset.
Now I’d like to volunteer
I would definitely recommend this mentoring programme to people in the built environment sector. A lot of people in my friendship age group are talking about career changes and I tell them that mentoring can be really useful.
I didn’t think BBU would be able to match me because I needed someone who has used their skills in a transferable way, but they did, so now I’d like to volunteer as a mentor for the next year’s programme to help a mentee who perhaps wants to do something a little different, like me.