WE FIND ADVANTAGE IN DISADVANTAGE,
CHANGE TRAJECTORY AND EXPAND BELIEF,
USING DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE AS A VEHICLE.
Mission
Design is the vehicle, but the mission is larger...
From Ground Up is a Community Interest Company operating at the intersection of exposure, access, and power, grounded in the belief that environment shapes experience. It influences aspiration, mental health, identity, opportunity, and income. The spaces we grow up in, physical, cultural, and social, define what we believe is possible. Many young black and mixed raced men navigate underexposure and systemic invisibility in design industries and beyond. The talent, creativity, and ambition exist, but access does not always follow. Using design as the lens, we exist to change that. We believe exposure can shift trajectories, creativity is a form of currency, and non-linear paths are both valid and valuable. Our work empowers young men in limiting environments that limit wellbeing and aspiration, toward agency. Perspective gained through challenge is not a limitation, but an asset used to navigate systems, and empower, influence and reshape environments.
In an age where automation replaces repetition, it is creative thinking, emotional intelligence, and alternative perspectives that endure, qualities many who don’t thrive in traditional academic systems already possess. When exposure expands, so does a sense of what is possible. FGU guides them to recognise that.
The goal is simple: to ensure young men can walk into any room, boardroom, university, or construction site, knowing they belong and have something to contribute. Not by accident. By design.
APPROACH
UNDERSTANDING
Thinking Through Space is a six-week immersive programme introducing architecture, design, and the wider creative industries through hands-on, highly interactive learning. Participants explore how environments shape behaviour, wellbeing, and perspective, while recognising how their own creativity can influence the spaces around them. The programme highlights the breadth of roles in design, including both traditional and non-linear pathways, and demonstrates the real-world links between art, maths, and technology. Participants work collaboratively throughout, strengthening communication, confidence, and creative thinking.
EXPOSURE
Project Exposure is a curated programme of immersive visits, designed to expand participants’ worldview. Through first-hand experiences, young people see how geography, culture, and space shape ambition, opportunity, and identity. For some, it reconnects them to heritage; for others, it introduces global possibility. The programme will begin with visits to UK-based creative studios, design practices, and built environment projects, making the industry tangible and accessible.
Plans are in development for 2027/28 for a UK - Jamaica cultural exchange where UK participants will visit live construction sites, connect with business owners, and experience design in context in Jamaica, while young Jamaican men travel to London to explore architecture, creative studios, and the city’s built environment. Exposure changes trajectory...
ACTION AND INFLUENCE
We advocate for greater inclusion in architecture and design, and for environments that prioritise wellbeing, dignity, and opportunity. Our work ensures that lived experience informs conversations at both ground and up to board level, helping shape spaces that better reflect the communities they serve. Young people should not only navigate systems, they should influence them.
We work beyond youth engagement, collaborating with those who design, build, and shape environments. Through consultation and shared learning, we engage government, local councils, architectural practices, developers, industry leaders, schools, youth organisations to encourage more inclusive thinking. By bridging lived experience with professional practice, we contribute to environments that are both well designed and socially responsive.
IMPACT
.png)
10%
of the UK design industry workforce comes from ethnic minority backgrounds, in a country where 1 in 5 people do
.png)
2X+
young Black people are more than twice as likely to be unemployed as white peers, even with equivalent qualifications
.png)
£60+
Million annual spend on architecture education in UK, with minimal diversity investment
.png)
1%
of UK registered architects are Black
Our programmes are designed to create measurable, long-term change. Participants develop environmental literacy, understanding how spaces influence behaviour and how to navigate them with intention. They gain awareness of roles across architecture and the creative industries, with clearer access to both traditional and non-linear pathways. They build confidence and identity, learning to communicate ideas clearly, visually and verbally, while developing transferable skills such as collaboration, problem-solving, and entrepreneurial thinking. Exposure to new environments expands perspective, cultural awareness, and ambition. Most importantly, they develop the ability to transcend environment without denying it, to refuse its limits, and to recognise that lived experience is not a constraint, but a source of insight and strength.
"Architecture and design have always reflected the society that creates them. Right now, that reflection is distorted. Programmes like From Ground Up don't just diversify a profession, they expand what's possible within it." - Principal Architect, London-based design practice
"When young Black men are systematically excluded from creative industries, we don't just lose talent, we lose entire ways of seeing and solving problems. FGU is addressing that loss at exactly the right point: before it happens."
- Head of Creative Arts, Secondary School, South East London
"The pipeline into architecture and design has been broken for too long. What excites me about From Ground Up is that it doesn't wait for the industry to fix itself, it builds the pathway directly, with the young people who need it most." - Diversity & Inclusion Lead, Built Environment Sector
"Experincing this juxtaposition sparked my curiosity about space, environment and the behaviours it can evoke.” - Jethro
At the heart of From Ground Up is that non-linear journey. Fuelled by, human insight, creativity, graft, leadership, and building across cultures in both London and Jamaica. FGU exists because structural underexposure, and environment can shrink or expand belief.
Our story
Anchored in lived experience and professional practice, From Ground Up was created by Jethro Huie, the founder and Principal Designer of Huie Designs, an award winning design studio. Jethro has over 20 years of self taught experience in international design and development.
Born in London to Jamaican and English parents, he grew in West London, surrounded by stark contrasts: multi-million-pound properties, alongside council estates. At eleven years old, his family moved 100 ft, from a second floor, south-facing flat overlooking a tree-lined, residential street that suggested possibility and inspired imagination, to a fifth-floor flat at the centre of an estate. This second home faced inward, onto the estate itself, with a contrasting view framing repetition, enclosure, limitation.
Although the first home sat on the edge of the same estate and geographically close, the psychological and social shift was profound and his creative confidence was diminished. The environment changed, and at such a formative stage in his life, so did he.
"Experincing this juxtaposition sparked my curiosity about space, environment and the behaviours it can evoke.” - Jethro Huie
At the heart of From Ground Up is that non-linear journey. Fuelled by, human insight, creativity, graft, leadership, and building across cultures in both London and Jamaica. FGU exists because structural underexposure, and environment can shrink or expand belief.
Team
Name
Name
Name
Name
Partner with us. Fund us. Spread the word. Lets connect...