Student + Startups
CLIENT
LOCATION
COMPLETED
PROJECT TYPE
Workshop Presentation
OF IMMERSIVE
ENGAGEMENT
PARTNERSHIP WITH
BETTER FUTURES INSTITUTE
IDENTITY → PLACE → ACTION
FRAMEWORK
WORKFORCE FUTURES +
POLICY LAB
WORKFORCE FUTURES + POLICY LAB
COLLABORATIVE IDEATION
REFLECTION EXERCISE
STUDENT ENGAGEMENT
Landscape Architecture
Urban Planning
Parks & Recreation Master Planning
Community Engagement
Public Outreach
Stakeholder Facilitation
Visioning & Strategic Planning
GIS & Park System Analysis
Where young people choose to build their futures is shaped by more than employment.
Career opportunity matters, but so do belonging, quality of life, community, identity, and whether a city feels like a place where they can imagine themselves growing.
For the second year, Urban Alchemy Collective partnered with the Better Futures Institute to design and facilitate Student + Startups, an immersive experience focused on the future of San Antonio’s emerging workforce.
What began as a one-day workshop evolved into a three-day experience built around a simple progression: Identity → Place → Action.
Students reflected on who they are and what matters to them, explored San Antonio’s innovation and career ecosystem, and developed ideas around what could make the city a place where more graduates choose to stay, grow, and build their futures.
Student + Startups created a structured space for students to move from program participants to active contributors in a broader conversation about San Antonio’s future.
The three-day experience:
Better Futures Institute wanted to create an experience that would help students think more deeply about their futures while also generating meaningful insight into how emerging professionals perceive San Antonio.
The experience needed to:
01
Help students understand their own values, strengths, and aspirations
02
Expose students to San Antonio’s career, innovation, and entrepreneurial ecosystem
03
Explore how place, belonging, opportunity, and quality of life influence where graduates choose to build their lives
04
Create opportunities for mentorship, connection, reflection, and collaborative problem-solving
05
Translate student perspectives into ideas that could inform larger conversations around workforce development, talent retention, and the future of San Antonio
Urban Alchemy Collective approached Student + Startups as an experience to be designed, not simply a workshop to be facilitated.
Rather than beginning with predetermined solutions, we started with the students themselves.
Through personal narrative exercises, facilitated conversations, place-based experiences, reflection, mentorship, and collaborative problem-solving, participants moved through a three-part framework:
Identity
Understanding who they are, what they value, and what they want from their future.
Place
Exploring their relationship with San Antonio and experiencing the people, organizations, opportunities, and environments shaping the city.
Action
Turning reflection and experience into ideas, recommendations, and conversations about what could help more emerging professionals see a future in San Antonio.
Urban Alchemy Collective provided:
Community engagement
Stakeholder facilitation
Workshop and experience design
Facilitated dialogue
Personal narrative exercises
Place-based learning
Collaborative problem-solving
Workforce futures exploration
Policy lab facilitation
…to create an experience that built value at multiple levels: for students, for Better Futures Institute, and for the broader conversation around San Antonio’s future workforce.
Student + Startups reflects a broader idea at the heart of Urban Alchemy Collective’s engagement practice: engagement does not have to begin and end with gathering input for a plan. It can build relationships, develop people, generate knowledge, and connect lived experience to the decisions and investments shaping our communities.
Missing Quotes
Assistant City Manager