Training & Consultancy
Building your professional confidence and capacity for rights-based best practice, youth engagement, and inclusive design, through specialist training and consultancy.
For professionals, community leaders and organisations seeking to integrate children and young people’s voices into decision-making, we offer training, coaching, mentorship and consultancy that builds capacity for rights-based engagement in placemaking, planning, active travel and public space.
Our courses help professionals embed the UNCRC and principles of inclusion, youth leadership and co-design into policy, practice and project delivery. Grounded in direct practice, lived experience and academic research, we provide tested-and-trusted approaches, practical next-gen tools, and reflective practice to build confidence and capacity for working with children and young people of all ages and abilities.
We are recognised, sector-leading experts with a proven track record. Our services range from co-designing cross-sector frameworks to delivering professional development and training—both bespoke and general—for individuals and organisations. Our national award-winning approaches are designed to support lasting culture and systems change, embedding children’s imagination and rights into your personal and organisational aims.
Strategic Frameworks
Framework for Scottish Placemaking with Young People (Sustrans Scotland)
This project aimed to co-create a shared framework for high-quality, rights-based engagement of children and young people in local infrastructure projects. Commissioned by Sustrans, we facilitated a year-long process of co-creation and consensus-building with over 100 stakeholders—from planners and designers to school staff and young people.
Participants co-developed, and agreed by consensus, two complementary models: one to improve project planning and continuity, and another to enable inclusive, whole-school engagement. They also identified barriers to good practice and co-produced remedies, standards, and practical tools.
Grounded in 360-degree insight and lived experience, the resulting framework provides a clear, actionable roadmap for better engagement, UNCRC compliance, and greater trust across sectors. A staged piloting process offers potential to drive culture change in placemaking and infrastructure delivery across Scotland.
UNCRC Compliance
Children’s Rights in Practice: Bespoke Workshop (Play Scotland)
We delivered a bespoke half-day training workshop for Play Scotland, tailored to the specific needs of their 20-strong team. The session provided a practical introduction to children’s rights under the UNCRC, with a focus on their application to placemaking and play.
Drawing on APiC’s experience of embedding children’s rights into professional practice, the workshop was underpinned by original PhD research conducted by an APiC Director on children’s rights and the Scottish planning system.
The training equipped attendees with greater knowledge and confidence to embed rights-based approaches in their work, received strongly positive feedback, and helped lay the foundations for more inclusive placemaking across Scotland.
Training Courses
Building Practical Capacities and Know-How for Rights-Based Practice
We offer online and in-person training for individuals, local authorities, and third-sector organisations across the UK. Our core package introduces our rights-based How-To Guide for co-creating neighbourhood plans with children and teenagers—equipping professionals with the tools and theory needed to engage meaningfully in placemaking.
Two flexible formats are available: a half-day online course providing foundational knowledge, and a bespoke in-person workshop offering hands-on experience, including roleplay and site visits. Both cover best practice, UNCRC principles, and inclusive planning methods, with tailored pricing for public, third, and private sectors.
The training builds confidence, understanding, and delivery of children’s rights in planning and community development. It also helps embed youth voices in social policy processes. Team discounts and content customisation are available to meet specific organisational needs.
Organisational CPD
Strategic Professional Development & Mentorship (Shetland Islands Council)
Our collaboration with Shetland Islands Council began in Autumn 2024 with a bespoke in-person training session in Lerwick, attended by 15 council officers and third-sector partners. The focus was on rights-based placemaking with children and young people.
Through role play and experiential mapping, participants reconnected with their inner child and teenager to explore how lived experience can shape better local places. Grounded in UNCRC principles, the session brought planning theory to life in a playful, practical way.
This training laid the groundwork for ongoing mentoring and co-facilitation by APiC to support school engagements across the islands, helping to embed culture change and placemaking principles across teams and into everyday thinking and practice.
A standout early outcome is a child-led plan created in North Yell—facilitated with primary schoolchildren by one of our original trainees—which reflects a growing culture of meaningful, youth-led participation in local spatial planning.
We’re here for all who believe in and invest in young people—championing their right to flourish and contribute as equal stewards of today and tomorrow, on their terms.
We support policymakers, researchers, planners, practitioners, educators, architects, third-sector leaders and philanthropists who know we can -and must- do better for young people—and understand that reintegrating their wisdom, creativity, and potential into society will build a better world and future for everyone.
Our services are fully bespoke—shaped around your goals, constraints, and context. Integrating research, placemaking, co-design, and training, and grounded in shared values of youth leadership, capacity-building, and rights, we bring the skill and experience to make your ideas work.
If you’re ready to act, we’d love to work with you – get in touch to start the conversation.