Grow Places

GP 35: Urban Integration from Policy to Pavements: with Lucy Musgrave of Publica

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In this episode of the Grow Places Podcast, host Tom Larsson is joined by Lucy Musgrave, founder of Publica, to explore the intricate relationship between urban policy, design, and real-world impact.

From shaping London’s most iconic streets and spaces to influencing major policy initiatives like Good Growth by Design, Lucy shares her insights on how cities can evolve in a way that is both inclusive and sustainable. They discuss Publica’s research-driven approach, the role of civic leadership in shaping urban futures, and why listening to diverse voices is key to creating thriving neighbourhoods.

Lucy also shares her personal journey – from overcoming leukemia to her daily cartwheel challenge – and how it fuels her mission to create more equitable, people-focused cities.

Topics include:
✔️ The intersection of urban design, policy, and social impact
✔️ The importance of inclusive planning and diverse representation
✔️ The evolving role of public space in city life
✔️ How small urban interventions can lead to big societal change
✔️ Why a national emergency on women's safety should be a call to action for the built environment

This is a must-listen for anyone passionate about place, people, and progress in our cities.

🔗 Follow us @WeGrowPlaces and visit growplaces.com for more insights.

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the Grow Places podcast, where we explore the virtuous circle of people, growth and place Brought to you by Grow Places and hosted by our founder, Tom Larson.

Speaker 2:

Hi Lucy, hi Tom, how are you? I'm really good. Have you done your cartwheel today? No, no, are you planning to, or do we need to do one after this?

Speaker 3:

We could do one after this. Yeah, there's enough space. I do a cartwheel every day. I have done a cartwheel every day since January, the 1st 2023. And wherever I am, I do a cartwheel. So if we don't do one in this space, then I'll do one. I'm off to an English Heritage reception tonight in Cornhill in the city, so I've already clocked that. I've got a good. There's good, very good backdrops in London in every street and space, so always a good place to do a cartwheel and surprise people.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, well, it's. It's always something I look out for on social media because you are doing it all over the place. Yeah, but obviously it's always something I look out for on social media because you are doing it all over the place. Yeah, um, but obviously there's a reason. You know why you're doing that as well, isn't there? And um, um, and that, you know, is a component of you know what you're, what you're doing in your professional, personal life. I think it's, um, it's great for you to give your time to have a conversation today, um, just to learn a bit more about what drives you and the work you do at Publica and also everything else. So why don't you give me a bit of an introduction to yourself?

Speaker 3:

To me, oh, the cartwheeling.

Speaker 2:

No, however, you want to take it, lucy. Okay, yeah.

Speaker 3:

So I'm Lucy Musgrove, I'm the founder of Publica and I have built an incredible team of people in a cross and multidisciplinary way to look at the complexity of urban neighbourhoods, build a research methodology so we're very research-led so that you can extract from the specificity of an actual place and its communities and multiple different perspectives on that place, the principle-led approach to urban change, and that's what we do. So we do it at three scales. We are using that participative, very forensic analysis of why a place is what it is economically, socially, culturally, environmentally, what it's actually made of everything about it, why it is what it is in the past, today and in the future. We do that methodology in a participative way because of people's different lived experience. We are a city of multitudes of different communities, different lived experience. I mean that is what makes this great city and all the great cities actually. So we put a lot of onus on spending time with people who have a different perspective to us and beginning to understand all of that. How you capture that through analysis and data and all communicated visually so it's very accessible to people making decisions and the decision makers could be investors, developers, different building occupiers, different land owners, different community organizations and certainly statutory authorities, so civic leaders, planning authorities, government agencies, the mayor of london, etc. Etc. So that's our job, basically, and the three scales of city-wide, neighborhood and streets and spaces.

Speaker 3:

Um, the streets and spaces part is actually our applied urban design that we have been privileged enough to have designed some really extraordinary streets and spaces in central london and in other boroughs and the incredible team at publica is made up of designers and landscape architecture, lighting you know, you name it. We've got multiple different disciplines here to look at how you translate that visual three-dimensional brief into actual built work and some of it's been award-winning and very iconic, like this redesign of bond street and hanover square and and some of the streets around that um. So that's publica and this wonderful team and we also. The same wonderful team is a community interest company that's running a very ambitious campaign about an inclusive city and what we need to do within our sector to understand and train and speak and act differently through many, many different ways of thinking about inclusivity. But our first lens has been gender inclusion and gender equity in the built environment and that's been really exciting. I can tell you all about that. So the community interest company, the not-for-profit side of publica is a very, very important part of publica that we all contribute to. Um.

Speaker 3:

And then, if you really want to know more about me, I'm in remission from leukemia and I do a cartwheel today, a day because I'm fundraising for my nurses at uclh who've got this incredible research and education program for the whole hematology department, and I have surprised a lot of people by being cartwheeling through different cities and countries wherever I am and I've raised a bit of money. So anybody who's listening to this and wants to contribute there's a fundraising just giving page and a kind of explanation of why I'm doing. It called cartwheeler day. I've got some big ideas about how to get the nation cartwheeling and I'm going to launch that with a whole bunch of very famous people and we're going to see if we can get the nation cartwheeling for leukemia research.

Speaker 3:

Basically because it turns out that leukemia research can inform other cancer research because of the way that leukemia research works with its blood and it's a blood cancer, so actually people can get data and therefore what's happening in the lab in terms of the research for leukemia, around immunotherapy, around CAR-T. All of these great innovations of science are benefiting all cancer research. So for me, knowing now too much about leukemia, it feels like a really important thing to do, because every family in the whole country will be affected by cancer at some point in their that family's history. Yeah, um, and so the fact we can talk about it and we can make advances and we can um think about actually patient care and you know how people are treated, is really important to me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, absolutely, and thank you for sharing that as well, as you know the amazing work that you and the team have done over a really long period here at Publica, and I'd love to dive into all of that work that you've done and some of the work we've done together. But I thought it was interesting maybe to frame it around, obviously, the journey that you've been on personally and maybe where you are now in terms of your outlook and purpose and what motivates you to do what you do. And is that any different now as it was before? Is it sort of sharper, keener focus, or do you feel like it's sort of validated some of um the work you've done in the past?

Speaker 3:

or I think I guess I'm long enough in the tooth to know, um, that the way that we have refined and finessed this research methodology is really important and works. And I mean we often talk about the fact that the answer's in the neighbourhood, that the answer's there, so nowhere is discounted. And actually the care and attention that you put into understanding what the brief should be and who gets to partake in setting that brief, I think is something that I have got a lot of experience in understanding the significance of what that can mean, both in terms of the planning process, but also what it means in terms of design and strategic design and what it means in terms of civic leadership and what it means in terms of community well-being and social value. So, yeah, it works. It's really interesting, it's really complex and I think it's a kind of missing bit in the built environment and certainly in terms of some design or architecture practice. It's sort of there is a solution but actually without the care and attention in terms of integration of that urban change, then it can become actually you're creating more problems than more solutions.

Speaker 3:

So it's been tested, it's been finessed and it's constantly being considered and informed by the different perspectives in Publica in terms of what we learn on every job, from every collaboration, with every architecture practice, with every client, with every really interested in policy. So how policy makers or themselves are driving change, how, yeah, how people, investors want to drive change. It's, it's. It's a really lively, dynamic debate, yes, thing about how cities, cities always in flux, they've always been in flux. So, actually, how do you achieve what you want to achieve in terms of some things that matter to everybody?

Speaker 3:

I guess, that's what I mean by civic urbanism.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, totally Well, we talk about place growth and that's kind of our sort of catchphrase for it really, and you know, as you know, we've had a lot of values alignment around things, hence why we've worked together on Truman Brewery with your team and other things, and I do think that your approach really has been leading over the past decades in um in that sort of context, context-led, sort of people-led approach to change and doing it through a lens. That is about change, it is about optimistically thinking about the future but bringing people and places along with you. Um. So we've learned a lot about kind of our values from from your work and um and you. You mentioned the different areas. You know kind of research, practice and I'd also put policy probably in that with you as well and that interface between all three um. You know particularly the policy work that you're looking at at the moment um around diversity and inclusivity for different groups and the fact that you are sat at I was going to say you're sat at the top table, which what do I mean by that?

Speaker 3:

I mean you know you're engaged with GLA, you're engaged with the policymaking side of things, and how do you see that kind of ecosystem as a whole then, in terms of being able to do things sort of on the ground, if you want to call it that, in a context that is favourable, I think that we've been quite alert to the gaps in urban planning and there are multiple blind spots, kind of hiding in plain sight, and we have a very curious approach to actually you know what's going on and why is it going on. So along the way, we've been lucky enough to be used by the GLA and particularly the Good Growth by Design team. I'm a mayoral design advocate. Satya Stretfield, who leads our nighttime work here, is one of our associates, is a mayoral design advocate. Anna Mansfield is on the infrastructure panel for the mayor. So we're lucky that we've been able to contribute to multiple different kind of forums of advisory roles, and I think that one of the things that London is very impressive about is the fact that the GLA has got this suite of policy called Good Growth by Design. It's really thought carefully and it's constantly finding more gaps and more thinking in terms of what do we need to know, and many different practices and people and researchers and policy writers have contributed to that suite. We've led on a few of them. So Making London a Child-Friendly City is something that Anna Mansfield led on for Publica and that's actually about independent child and young people's mobility through the city and it's a human right. So actually if we want to have, you know, active, engaged generations using our neighbourhoods and different parts of the city, then actually how we move through cities and how children and young people are treated is really critical. All of the work is framed within a big database of international best practice. So when we're doing something like Child Friendly it's always losing multiple different case studies.

Speaker 3:

And another area is I sat on the Nighttime Commission for the Mayor of London and Satu Stretfield and I and Daniel Blyth, our senior researcher here, were talking a lot internally about how do we design for the evening and the night time and actually it's not about the night time economy and there's how the city functions at night is really complex and we've got huge proportions of people working at night in multiple different sectors and again about transport, infrastructure and health and so forth. So we were contributing that to the Nighttime Commission and then Amy Lame and the team at the GLA asked for us to help pull together again multiple international case studies, guidance and policy on the evening and nighttime training the nighttime borough champions. So each borough now has a cabinet member and a senior officer in part of that network and retained for four years in terms of feeding and guiding and developing with the mayor, the night test and multiple other kind of tools within urban policy. And then the work that we've been doing recently on women, girls and gender diverse people safety. Actually is a three-year project for the GLA and the GLA has taken this really seriously. So first of all, ellie Cosgrave, our director of our community interest company here, and her team with Daniel and others and the GLA officers and Merrill Design advocates set out a very, very pioneering piece of policy. The GLA, to their credit, then asked us to test our own draft guidance on 10 live, gla, tfl, lldc projects, all at different stages in planning and design, different scales, different building typologies, different land uses and then finesse that having worked with project managers, development directors, design teams, you know borough officers, you name it and actually work out where would the guidance work and what people's reaction to this draft guidance was. And then the further years. There's a three-year project in terms of finessing that guidance and launching it.

Speaker 3:

So this a really really kind of like case study in terms of how Publica works with some of those statutory decision makers in the policy field.

Speaker 3:

It's through comparison with how other people are doing it understanding the London reality in terms of the context and a reality check in terms of how it can actually be implemented on the ground to make it as impactful as possible.

Speaker 3:

And some of the subjects like child-friendly evening and night time, women and girls experience of the city and, in fact, other ones that we've done for the gla's culture team, like the cultural vision for the whole of the river thames all of those things are absolutely fascinating subjects that require a really whole systems approach, research in terms of some of the enduring research questions, the participation, the testing and then getting the right guidance into the london plan, and couldn't be more important, I think, and we all feel very strongly about that, and particularly I think at the moment that our CIC's campaign for inclusive cities just this summer in 2024, the Chief Police Officers Council for England and Wales and also Samarke Rowley, the Commissioner for the London Metropolitan Police, have announced a national emergency about violence, the intimidation and harassment that women and girls have to contend with just as a daily, everyday thing.

Speaker 3:

So a national emergency acknowledged by the new government, a priority for the Prime Minister, a priority for the Mayor of London and a priority for the prime minister. A priority for the mayor of london and a priority for everybody, I would hope, in terms of our role in the built environment sector, to think about how are we designing and planning cities and what are some of those things that we're accidentally baking in in terms of bias and discrimination for all citizens? Um, so yeah, I think if people declare a national emergency, it's up to our sector to step up and do something about it in terms of yeah 100 practical, progressive and very exciting ways of making things more equitable and more accessible.

Speaker 3:

Um, it's good for society, it's good for business. It's good for business, it's good for communities, it's good for absolutely everybody if we can all feel that we can contribute to urban life yeah, yeah, 100 and um.

Speaker 2:

so so that work that you're doing, obviously within the kind of built environment sphere of this, how much are you interfacing with other aspects of the GLA policy or even government policy? Because the built environment is the background, isn't it? It's the fabric, but some of the social issues obviously are very multidimensional. And does that factor into the research that you do?

Speaker 3:

Absolutely so. Some examples are. So when we launched the Good Growth by Design guidance Jules Pipe was launching it as the deputy mayor for, obviously, planning regeneration Sophie Linden, who's the deputy mayor for policing and crime, launched it. The commissioner, will Norman, was there in the audience. It was a really well representedrepresented approach to the civic leadership of this city.

Speaker 3:

On that work, ellie Cosgrave and actually some of her students from UCL and myself went to Barcelona to talk to a network of 14 world cities to explain what we've been doing in London and Manchester. Actually, we've done a lot of work in Manchester on this subject and on the basis of that annual summit of these 14 cities, looking at issues more widely against what's happening in terms of gender inclusion, we've been asked to work in three of the 14 cities as exemplar projects that can be shared amongst the other 11. We're going to Louisville, kentucky, in the United States. We're going to Bogota in Colombia and to Stockholm in Sweden. So three completely different cities with completely different issues in terms of urban form, communities, demographics, the economy, economy, societal issues, social contracts and kind of impact you name it. You couldn't get further afield than those three cities. Um, it's absolutely incredible to see what's happening in london and manchester leap into a much, much bigger international debate.

Speaker 2:

And yeah, that's fascinating, that's fascinating, that's fascinating. And you mentioned that there's obviously specific things with all those different places, but are there any common themes that you think that our attitude is?

Speaker 3:

to start with the fieldwork, so we'll be doing fieldwork in each of those cities and working with the city leaders in terms of understanding what's going on, but in terms of the common threads in the philosophy, the research methodology and the participative aspects, the participation matters and that people's lived experiences and some of those dynamics really matter and you know dana walker, a friend, always talks about deep, active listening that fact that you've really got to go with very, very open ears and mind in terms of understanding what those issues are.

Speaker 2:

um, yeah, yeah, yeah, interesting. And so what do you think in that kind of um city scale or governmental scale, um, what do these people of of power, whether it's mayors or leaders of cities, what do they think about you as a, as all the built environment industry? Um, do they, do they see that as a real kind of key facet of some of these larger social issues? Do they address it in a way that you you'd hope, you know they put the importance on it, you'd hope or is it kind of um something that you are sort of um sort of suggesting in a way, you know, look at the importance that these places have and the schemes we design have.

Speaker 3:

I think, I mean, I think there's lots of really intractable issues in city, any town and city. I think that our generation is looking at how you can unpick some of the infrastructure that has been a given in terms of particularly highways and the use of the private car, for example. So I think that the intersectional issues of the impact of climate change and issues about biodiversity and environmental sustainability and green infrastructure is kind of really a massive issue for well, an emergency in terms of a crisis. And then there are huge issues about the social consciousness in the last few years after the pandemic and after a whole series of issues about racism in our society, around social justice, and I think people are alive to the fact that actually, like what have we done? Kind of thing feeling. So, I think, culturally, in terms of public health, obviously, in terms of the way that we work and the patterns of work. So I think, in terms of civic leadership, there's a liveliness, there's a receptiveness to actually these are universal and intractable issues that many, many places in the world are scratching their head and trying to tackle, and our attitude is that there is a lot of skill in our sector in terms of being able to understand why, technically and also, I guess, functionally and symbolically, some of this stuff is manifest in the way it is spatially and also feeding some of those civic leaders in terms of the evidence base, the imagination, to think big and to do their job, which is to lead to be civic leaders. So, you know, an example of that might be.

Speaker 3:

You know, we've did this really, really kind of heartfelt labour of love in terms of resetting Hanover Square in the middle of the West End. And it was just asking a few people. The really obvious question is that when this new railway, the Elizabeth Line, opens and you arrive from Heathrow in a matter of minutes and you arrive into London's West End this was the first Georgian Square. You know, should we restore and revitalise this incredible piece of open space? And actually, the private sector through Toby Courtauld and the developers' GP said that's a really interesting point they were developing the overstation development at the time in a courtyard that we were working on. It was Publica's first. Toby cortell said, actually, why don't you actually make? See if you can make a project happen with the right statutory uh players, and you know panama square we're very proud of, we took the traffic out to the west side. We completely redesigned the whole thing with multiple different players and many, many people in the design team and in terms of the client base, the advisory group, the funders, the you know, all of the statutory highways and transport infrastructure players. So the appetite is there, if you can, the evidence base and also a path through.

Speaker 3:

So I think that, in terms of imagination and innovation, some people in the built environment sector are very, very good at that and, yeah, it's very stimulating to be able to direct some big questions to London. Can we move the inner ring road at Marble Arch, which is our major project at the moment? The answer is yes, and we can reconnect the Royal Park to Oxford Street and we can think about the setting of a national monument in the most glorious public space that will be the size of Trafalgar Square. It's a really exciting project. It's not something that, without a series of people promoting that and wanting to make that kind of grand projet happen, it's ever going to happen, but we're lucky that I think people have seen that. Actually, why wouldn't you, why wouldn't you, you know, sort of deal with some of the issues about air quality and safety and civic amenity and green infrastructure this city needs?

Speaker 2:

yeah, yeah, absolutely, and I think it's a fascinating position that that you publica hold within that, because you, because you are, as we, as we say, you know, on certain projects like you mentioned, hanover square you are, um, you are doing the detail of the, the joints between the pavers and you know, and then you're also kind of lobbying and creating policy and, as you say, to get sort of transformational change, you do need to kind of have that cross-sectional impact and, um, you've kind of touched on some of it there about you know the disparate nature of the industry and the different actors within it, but are there anything common themes that you've learned about? How you, how you actually translate some of these things through, from policy mission through to paving slabs, let's say, things happening?

Speaker 3:

I think, I think, um, we're lucky that London, which is our home, is a city of negotiation and collaboration, and I remember when Louise Wyman was at West Midlands Combined Authority and asked me to come and speak when they were launching their design principles for the West Midlands, and there was quite a few people who were discussing afterwards with me about, like, how do these projects actually get delivered? I mean, it's so difficult here, and we could not have delivered any of these projects without. You know the multiple different people working hand in glove, whether that's decision makers, funders you know the term contractors in terms of engineering, in terms of who's actually delivering and constructing the streets, our role as designers and design managers and design guardians, um, you know many the business improvement districts who are helping in terms of all the communication and also thinking about all the occupiers. There's so many different people all working in concert because projects are.

Speaker 3:

Even however small a project is, it's really complicated it is. You can only really, in my opinion, deliver urban change with long-termism and true sustainability if you've really got many, many different people involved and and that's really why it's not just about one body or one design studio or even one urban designer here, it's actually, it's that's strategic design and, uh, it's collaborative, and I think london's really good at that, partly because of its very mixed ownership and mixed, fractured governance levels. It's it's quite complicated, but I think something comes out of that in terms of the collaborative nature and for you personally, what?

Speaker 2:

what's driving you personally? What's driving you? You know what's driving you, motivating you to do all of these things and you know to sort of spend your time. You know, because this is hard. You know it's hard work, as you say. It takes time, it takes passion, it takes dialogue and you know there's a lot that goes into that. So why do you feel like you put your time to this work?

Speaker 3:

it's really fun. Um, it's like I don't think any of us would do it if it wasn't a lot of fun. It's, um, a very collegiate, collective approach to cross a multidisciplinary uh working at publica and it's a very supportive team. We find a lot of pleasure in terms of the achievements, in terms of actually making both physical, spatial and also quite major contributions to thinking about the city, and that's an international conversation. It's not just about you know this place or London or the UK. So I think it's very stimulating. It's intellectually very stimulating. I think we feel that it's really important because we have identified a methodology that actually is inclusive and therefore we get a lot of feedback in terms of the impact that we're having, in terms of just the process as well as the end product, which I think is important.

Speaker 3:

And I think that the built environment sector, whether it's the development sector or all of the professions that feed into it, it's really unrepresentative. I mean, it's really bad. We were just recently doing some stats on it for our NLA Reagine london competition and, according to the six professional bodies in the built environment, only 12 percent of the makeup of the built environment sector is female. Um, it doesn't make sense. And then also I've got other things that I feel very passionately about, particularly around diversity and actually being able to understand different people's lived experiences, because I think I was doing something for the NLA sounding board, which was speaking about diversity, which I didn't feel I was the correct person to be able to do that, but I said, okay, I'll take it on and recorded 12 different people's lived experience about what they would want to say to the Mayor of London about the built environment, from their protected characteristic and their particular experience, and at the sounding board all I did was play the 12 recordings to be able to actually listen to the fact that.

Speaker 3:

And then we had an end slide, which Daniel helped me put together, which was we looked at the ONS data and the proportion of Greater London that is able-bodied, working age, middle class white, male, cis, straight, you name it kind of like that proportion male, cis, straight, you name it kind of like that proportion, which is the majority of the built environment sector in terms of the development and practices is only 9% of Greater London. So 91% of the population of Greater London have a different experience, and that's not making a judgment about it at all, it's just, actually, if we are going to design and plan cities differently, that are inclusive. We need to work on issues of representation and methodology and getting the right brief, and then we can all flourish. Everyone can flourish, whether you're able-bodied or not, if you've got a particular approach in terms of feeling that the city is for you or the city is not for you. So on that, what?

Speaker 2:

are the practical steps you think that we can take? I obviously fully agree with everything you're saying, and yeah, so what are the practical steps we can take on project x or project y in company x, company y to to, to bring some of this, you know, change forward in terms of um, as you're saying, not just the the types of people working within the industry, but also the types of people working within the industry, but also the types of people being consulted on and being engaged and brought into the processes along the way.

Speaker 3:

Our dream in the campaign for inclusive cities is to build something which we call the knowledge hub, and that's basically our argument. Is all of the intelligence, all of the knowledge, everything, all the resources actually already exist. It's just a matter of making them accessible. And so we want to build a digital kind of landscape of all of those tools, those podcast debates, language you know, how do you run workshops, how do you set up briefs, how do you engage with everything made accessible as a completely, you know, accessible and open source, uh, resource? So I think that there are really practical things that you can do.

Speaker 3:

It's not scary or difficult. It's actually sometimes people just haven't had that conversation or haven't or don't know how to access the right, you know, the right resources, um. So, yeah, I think the balance of who's in the room, how money is spent and what the ambitions and the objectives are in terms of urban change, I think probably need to be spoken about early on in a project. But actually being able to understand movement, youths, the evening and nighttime, young people, children, families, people of different you know sort of ethnic or religious um groups in people of different. You know sort of ethnic or religious groups in terms of different ways and different cultures, of using the thing that we all share, which is the space in between buildings, and having that evidence base and then having the tools actually to speak to a bunch of decision makers in terms of what that might mean in the design team, what it might mean in terms of the planning process. You know it's's, yeah, it's, it's, it's a skill, it's, it's not, it's completely replicable, it's a complete, accessible way of working.

Speaker 2:

Um, but it isn't just by saying it you actually have to do it, kind of thing um if that makes sense yeah, totally, and um, I think one of the things for me personally that makes what we do really really interesting is your, on on one hand, you've got the the process side about designing and making buildings, which, although it can be quite creative, it's also quite technical. It's, you know, it's quite linear in a lot of ways. You know you go through a stage process and then all of that is in the context of the kind of like the messiness of people and of everyday life and of culture and of neighborhoods and politics and and and that's like a really fascinating sort of constantly evolving challenge that we're all sort of grappling with and um, it must be really um enriching for you now to be looking at different places, as you've mentioned, different cities, not just within the uk but internationally, and and seeing where there are the similarities and where there are differences, and um, really fascinated to see kind of that emerge um and do you plan?

Speaker 2:

did you know we, for example, we've done a research piece in the past, haven't we, where we looked at housing in france and in the uk. And so back to you know, we've covered kind of the policy aspects of what you do and the the practical aspects, but that research aspect, which for me has always been really a great thing that you do, do you see any kind of research pieces coming out maybe of the work that you're doing? Or do you do you um kind of have quite an intentional sort of program of those research projects?

Speaker 3:

the I mean a lot of the last few years has been on some of the things that were laid bare around the pandemic.

Speaker 3:

So, actually, how do we produce both qualitative and quantitative ideas about integration in terms of public health? Um, the work that clay baylor, our landscape architect, does in terms of actually sustainable urban drainage, and actually all the issues in terms of biodiversity net gain, many of the issues through the inclusive cities around, issues of multi-intersectional issues in terms of barriers to actually participating in urban life, whether our expertise through Ellie and the team is through gender inclusion, but also issues around. We were helping a developer at the moment look at issues of a neurodivergent building in terms of actually what does that mean for the interior designers and what might it mean in terms of actually why and how do we gather best practice on that? We've just set land securities inclusive design principles for the whole business, which is absolutely fascinating. So I think that there are more and more people in many different places in terms of thinking or acting or delivering the built environment, who are attuned to the fact that we need a more sophisticated and more in-depth approach to inclusion and diversity.

Speaker 3:

So, yeah, and that's the more than human aspects of our cities as well as the human aspects of our cities. Um. So yeah, in terms of the enduring research questions, and the way that we set our research is often quite opportunistic. I mean, it is you know, I think, know I think Anne has always said this that you see a chink of light in terms of, you know, the mayor put together a nighttime commission. That's really interesting. How do we design for the night and how can we throw ourselves into some of the expertise that we've got here or build a team around that expertise? So I think it is a two-way conversation between who else is asking for these gaps in urban planning and how can we share and fill and contribute to those gaps.

Speaker 2:

I think so, lucy, I you know you've brought a few pieces paper in with you today.

Speaker 3:

Um, curious to know what what that's about uh, I guess as an aid memoir I gave gave a keynote at the Connected Places Catapults annual summit that they did in the City of London earlier in the spring this year and I was speaking on the built environment and I suppose I started and I just printed off this speech because it was a kind of prompt for me, for me. But I think that what I was trying to say at the outset was that the UK has this international stature around creativity, the arts, around architecture, around all of the history of planning, you name it. I mean, it was a really important legacy and it's a legacy that wasn't made casually or by chance. It was actually a project that was built in the post-war period about giving education and arts education and accessibility to everybody, regardless of class or background. And I really, really fear that at the moment that we're getting narrower and narrower in terms of how people contribute to this sector or the creative industries.

Speaker 3:

And one of the things I'm involved in is a really fabulous charity called Grand Plan, and Grand Plan was set up a few years ago to address this issue about class and race. So if Siddharth Kajari, who set it up, sort of explains it, that if you're white middle class and you're a young person and you just got that creative, really kind of want to do something and you ask your mom, your dad or your aunt, your uncle or a godparent, saying I'm really interested in photography, and then you get a camera for your birthday. Or maybe you just say I'd like to paint, but I can't afford the rent. They pay your rent for a few weeks. Or there's some way that somebody is going to give you an invisible step grants to an applicant which is chosen through a really simple and accessible application process, judged by an independent jury of practitioners, of creative practitioners. And we've given out we're just at the point of 164 grants of £1,000, so £164,000.

Speaker 3:

And we're changing the ecosystem so that actually we can. It doesn't? You don't have to go to a private school to get incredible arts education. You can actually just have that tiny leg up to start your career and your the way that you're going to express yourself as a creative practitioner. So it it's really vital, I think, in terms of that we make things that we took for granted in previous generations in the UK, that we raise the debate and think about who gets to be an architect or a designer, or an urban designer, a landscape architect, a lighting designer, a filmmaker, a podcast producer, a writer, an artist, a painter, a photographer, whatever it may be. And yeah, that's a very practical way of trying to address this issue about barriers to some of those issues based on class and race.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, it sounds fascinating and so worthwhile.

Speaker 2:

And, as you know, there's the often as well, there's the barrier to kind of um, just just knowing that those opportunities even exist like there is a that you could apply yourself and become an artist, you know, if your family's, no one in your family has ever done that um. So there's like really foundational reasons aren't there for education about kind of access and opening that up, as well as the um, then the kind of opportunities that that gives to people who maybe feel like they've got a passion or a purpose for that? And, um, yeah, I do think, as a, as a country particularly, you know the, the lack of focus on the creative arts or creative pursuits as opposed to just, you know, math, science and english, is yeah is um is a shame really.

Speaker 3:

It's something definitely I feel like has gone away from us. It's also the fastest growing industry. As well as the tech sector, it's the fastest growing in terms of the industrial strategy. So it's something we're really good at and have been really good at in the past, and we just need to make sure that we're not narrowing down what we think of as creativity and culture, that actually we're opening it up, because I do think it's something that we are I mean not uniquely but that we are very, very well placed to compete in the world and what that means for our economy in terms of life chances and skills and opportunities and so forth. We should really build on it.

Speaker 3:

So it's a small yeah, if anyone wants to know about Grand Plan or our inclusive cities work, we are actively fundraising to move money that's in the wrong place into the right place, and it's not even very much money, it's just getting some of this stuff moving. So, yeah, please get in touch. Yeah, anybody. In terms of your network and I think it's also that thing about network sometimes it can be very it's who you know rather than actually your chance in terms of what you can contribute. Yeah, um, and I think as an industry. We've been pretty poor at that. Yeah, so it's, yeah, just picking away at some of the barriers and trying to open it up a bit yeah, yeah, no, fantastic.

Speaker 2:

Um, I was listening. I don't know if you've listened to it or read it, but James Dyson's autobiography no, I haven't, and he was very passionate and outspoken in his biography about the lack of support for engineering, creativity and manufacturing and how in our society, in the uk, it's seen as sort of somehow less noble than doing something which is maybe sort of a cerebral pursuit of working in the city or banking or something of that nature and um how you know, just if you can open up opportunities to young people to see that if they, if they do want to do something that's about making and um creativity and expressing it in a different way, then actually there's an opportunity for that um within the uk. And um, yeah, I do think it's as an education I've got, you know, young kids, and it's something that I'm much more focused on now as well when I think about their future. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And just how we opened up opportunities for them to express themselves but also put value on the things that the economy really values. Yeah, which isn't necessarily. You know maths, because not least Excel can do it for you, but chat cpt can do it for you even better. So you know how do we kind of facilitate some of these non-core subjects and the human condition.

Speaker 3:

Exactly, yeah, and I think I mean, you know, the built environment sector does have, you know, I mean there's people like rick wilmot at wilmot dixon. I mean they're I mean the people who have really really made a life's work out of thinking about how they can contribute to environmentally, socially, educationally. Yeah, we should be really proud. There's some really good players in terms of people who've opened up that thing of we need skills and we need to actually provide access to contributing to the built environment sector in a major way if we're going to tackle this transition to net zero and to dec, decarbonize.

Speaker 2:

It's really important, and not only the, not only the net zero, which is obviously the huge one, but for me as well, you know, affordability. How do we kind of do things smarter, quicker, cheaper?

Speaker 2:

we need to innovate and we need to do that, um, you know, at all levels and um, yeah, it's. It's a very difficult challenge to kind of marry some of these economic and technical things about cost of building and other things with the social issues we're facing about house prices and exactly affordability more broadly, exactly, yeah, exactly, no, really big subjects, but really really can be more important. Yeah, and for another day, I think. Lucy, thank you very much for your time.

Speaker 3:

Thanks, Tom.

Speaker 2:

Cheers.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to the Grow Places podcast. For more information, visit growplacescom and follow us at. We Grow Places across all social channels. See you next time.