Changing Culture and Challenging Stereotypes: Lets Build Bridges and Diversify!

A key player in the UK economy, the construction sector has a skills shortage particularly at graduate level. Young people are not entering the sector and it is one of the least diverse sectors in the UK. The BRIDGE Project aims to address this situation by identifying the factors that underpin this lack of diversity and use these to design, develop and evaluate a set of interventions to bring about positive change. Based on a theory of change, these have focused on admissions and recruitment, challenging the negative image of the sector, improving career information for young people and providing equality and diversity training for staff/employers. Our results show improvements in the gender balance of first year students and a more positive image of the sector by young people.