My name is Laura Sanderson and I am an architect, educator and creative who loves people and places. I spent almost a decade of my career working as a Senior Lecturer at Manchester School of Architecture (MSA) and now work freelance on creative projects including exhibitions, workshops, placemaking and collaborative research.

I am a Senior Fellow of the HEA (Higher Education Academy) and have published books and papers on architectural education, building reuse, contentious heritage and the future of the high street. In my role as the Atelier Leader for Continuity in Architecture, I co-led funded projects with the local communities in Bollington (2016), Bakewell (2017), Rochdale (2019), Shrewsbury (2020), Bradford (2021) and Preston (2023) which in turn led to research outputs including public design guides, exhibitions, built interventions, articles and book chapters. These projects all had a common theme; listening to the stories of a place to make new additions that are contextual, specific, appropriate and relevant.

Slightly earlier in my career (2013-2014), I led the MSA Events Programme - a cross year studio where around 30 projects are undertaken each academic year. Students worked in collaboration with local community groups to produce content such as installations, workshops, drawings, models and built projects. Over the few years which I led the programme I worked on a huge variety of projects from a boating lake in Piccadilly Basin (Atelier[zero]), a creative backdrop for a hat showcase in Stockport (You Can Leave Your Hat On) and a community kite flying afternoon (Make White Nancy Fancy) where children made their own kites from drawings of what they loved about their village.

I have always loved exhibitions as a mode of public engagement and have co-led shows at Cartmel Priory (If on a Winter’s Night, a Traveller), Rochdale Library (Rochdale Reimagined) and Bradford City Park (Bradford Reimagined). In 2019 I co-curated a multidisciplinary exhibition titled UnDoing which explored how buildings, places and artefacts are re-used, reinterpreted and remembered. The final list of interdisciplinary exhibitors were from backgrounds of architecture, art, interactive art, photography, visual arts and academia, bringing together sculpture, collage, orthographics, models, installation and films covering the international territories of Manchester, Tehran, Leominster, Poland, Edinburgh, Venice, Palestine, Belgium and Ghent as well as imagined futures and spaces now lost.

In July 2023 I worked on my first freelance project titled An Architect For A Day as the winning project of the City Sparks Residency at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry, where I worked with the local community in Openshaw to create an installation, activities and workshops which prompted visitors to consider the future of the Neighbourhood High Streets of Manchester. Linked to my work on the residency, I have recently been appointed as a Creative Practitioner on the Heritage Pathways project led by Dr Johnathan Djabarouti (MSA) where we will be exploring how movement, memory and the senses shape connection and belonging in Castlefield.

Working with children and young people has always been a passion of mine and in recent years this has led to a number of creative workshops in schools, where making and drawing are used as tools for children to understand the architecture around them. In 2020 I worked with the Heritage Schools Team (Historic England) on a workshop in Rochdale (Rochdale Reimagined by Schools) which went on to become an online learning tool through the pandemic. I have since worked on a number of other school projects Styal Stories (2023) and East Kilbride Stories (2024) in collaboration with the AHRC Funded Women of the Welfare Landscapes project, We Are Architects! (2024) in collaboration with Roberts + Stone Architects and Brick by Brick (2025) in collaboration with MSA LIVE.

I have a passion for storytelling, illustration, modelmaking and collage - which are often the tools that I use in my teaching and workshops. I am always busy on my own creative endeavours, which have recently included an obsession with clay and automata - skills which I hope to bring to my next collaborative project … watch this space …