Building skills in our local communities
At Magna, our vision is to create great homes together - with our colleagues, our customers, through partnerships and with our local community.
A great home means different things to different people and we’re always keen to know what it means to our customers and community. Recently, Stephanie Lloyd-Foxe, Building Safety Manager at Magna, organised a full-day event for 175 students in year 10, at The Woodroffe School in Lyme Regis, to design a home of the future.
Students had to produce an elevation drawing, floor plans and a written summary of key features. They had to think about who the home was for, where it would be - in a town or the countryside, what features it would have, how the people that live there would get around and what environmental impact there might be.
Stephanie was joined by several colleagues from our development and maintenance teams to manage three topic areas: architecture and design, environment and sustainability, and home functionality. Students gathered information from the area experts to help them create their great homes of the future.
Stephanie said: “We had an amazing day and saw 21 inspiring and enthusiastic presentations. We were very impressed with the standards of work from the students and the wide range of concepts and designs they created. We then agreed on an overall winning team, and a runner up, as well as some individual prizes for fantastic work. We could definitely see some future talent showcased here!”
Students really enjoyed the day, saying:
“It was great fun learning about the building industry and working with people I didn’t know. The Magna team were so informative about housing and architecture.”
“It was a really interesting day; I didn’t realise there were so many bits to consider when building houses!”
“I found out a lot about myself - I was surprised how confident I was when presenting in front of the whole year group.”
“Magna made the day fun; I learned a lot about the company, and it has made me think about my future options.”
As well as us finding out what a great home of the future meant for these students, the day also offered an insight into the opportunities available for the students when they leave school, and was a great way for us, as an employer, to give back to the communities we have homes in.
Our ambition is to be a great place to work, where talented and ambitious people enjoy rewarding and fulfilling careers in an inspirational environment. This is why we’re keen to support the talent of tomorrow. One of the ways we do this is by working with local schools.
Mr Holding, Head of Careers at The Woodroffe School, said: “ I am incredibly grateful to all the visitors from Magna Housing for making the day so successful. The students were fortunate to be offered such a range of interesting activities and I hope that they learned a lot about teamwork, motivation, communication and themselves. Magna is partnered with the school and has already supplied countless hours of support. We hope this will be a long-lasting relationship and hope the students appreciate how lucky they are having Magna work with us!”
We regularly have apprenticeship opportunities at Magna. If you’d like to know more about this, visit: https://www.magna.org.uk/about-us/careers/apprenticeships
Or, to see our latest vacancies, visit: https://www.magna.org.uk/about-us/careers
You can also find out more about The Woodroffe School here: https://www.woodroffe.dorset.sch.uk/