It’s about a kind of a vote of confidence in your local high street or town centre saying, ‘This is the best place for you to be’ and you know what, you get to avoid the cost and the pain of the commute and you get, as part of this equation, you get to spend more time with friends and family and in your community and really seeing the sort of increased sort of sustainability and resilience of the place that you have chosen to call home.
Susan Freeman
Hi I am Susan Freeman, welcome back to our PropertyShe podcast series brought to you by Mishcon de Reya, in association with the London Real Estate Forum, where I get to interview some of the key influencers in the world of real estate and the built environment. Today, I am really delighted to welcome Paloma Strelitz. Paloma is Head of Product & Creative Director of Patch, a startup developing a ‘Work Near Home’ ecosystem of coworking clubs and cultural venues across UK high streets. Prior to joining Patch, Paloma co-founded Assemble, the social impact design studio whose innovative, purpose-driven approaches were awarded the Turner Prize in 2015. Paloma writes, speaks, and advises on cities, culture, and technology, regularly presenting and advising in the UK and internationally, with roles spanning Design Advocate to the Mayor of London, to judge at the European Prize for Urban Public Space. She studied architecture at Cambridge University and the Royal College of Art and was awarded the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University (2019-20), where she concentrated on technology’s scope to power inclusive change. So, now we are going to hear from Paloma Strelitz about going from Turner Prize-winning architect to playing a leading role in Work Near Home startup, Patch.
Good morning, Paloma, welcome to the studio.
Paloma Strelitz
Hi Susan, it’s just wonderful to be here.
Susan Freeman
So, I know you’ve recently joined Patch, the Work Near Home startup, which has been quite a career pivot for you but let’s start with how you got there. I know that you studied architecture at Cambridge and that you then completed a Masters in Architecture at the Royal College of Art but how… when did you first become interested in architecture and where did you think you were going to go with it?
Paloma Strelitz
That’s a really interesting question. You know, I can’t remember a singular moment but I feel that I had so many wonderful experiences, which kind of brought together I suppose enjoyment of the city or enjoyment of a place with interesting experiences and one moment that I think of, or one experience, was the sort of summer before I was applying for university and I had applied to join the National Youth Theatre and as part of that, you were based for two weeks at the newly opened Laban Centre by Herzog and de Meuron which is in Deptford and it’s this building which had just won the Stirling Prize and I was already kind of getting interested in architecture so I had heard of it and there was this kind of amazing synergy between, you know, about which was about being part of the National Youth Theatre whilst that was sort of being held within this extraordinary building and I sort of felt that these two things coming together, which was kind of a unique and exciting experience really elevated by this very special place and I think that was a moment I think about as really drawing me into, you know an excitement about what a world of sort of architecture could bring.
Susan Freeman
Brilliant and then when you went onto study architecture, had you planned to become an architect? Is that what you had in your mind?
Paloma Strelitz
I really wasn’t sure whether I’d be an architect in the traditional sense. I think I had a real interest in how to make things happen, how to open up experience, perhaps how to democratise experience and how to kind of forge new and exciting opportunities and I think given that I’d studied architecture, that was the world in which I was sort of… had become used to framing my understanding of how you could kind of forge new experiences in the city.
Susan Freeman
And then you formed, with a number of other people, I suppose an architecture collective called Assemble and I think that was quite soon after you finished studying.
Paloma Strelitz
That’s correct, so the summer the year after we’d finished, we’d sort of decided that we were going to do a, our first project and we weren’t planning on founding a sort of design studio at that point, we were just really interested in having a moment where we could have kind creative control of our own project and so we sort of you know in the months leading up to creating the Cineroleum, which was our very first project, we were just kind of gathering together to meet and talk about what was something that we could do which was a kind of test bed for these ideas which we’d explored at university and which could bring a kind of really unique, distinctive and theatrical experience to the city.
Susan Freeman
And what was the Cineroleum?
Paloma Strelitz
So, the Cineroleum was the transformation of a derelict petrol station on Clerkenwell Road into a temporary cinema, which was sort of then hosted a month’s, a month of kind of screenings of movies sort of from all around the sort of idea of the journey or the city or travel so, from Dune to Barbarella and basically it was a project which we kind of conceived the idea of, raised the money for, built ourselves and then operated and it was about kind of bringing the sort of experience of the picture palace right back into the heart of the city.
Susan Freeman
And was that successful? I mean, did you get a good response to it?
Paloma Strelitz
You know we got a, such a tremendously positive response we hadn’t even anticipated it, the cinema sold out every night. It received a huge amount of press. I think one thing which we hadn’t, you know, fully recognised when we were sort of staging this intervention was that because we were in Clerkenwell Road, we were in such a visible location and that meant so many people experienced it or passed by it or and wondered what it was and were able to kind of enjoy it or take part in it even if they weren’t able to kind of get a ticket for one of the screenings.
Susan Freeman
That’s brilliant. And you didn’t feel that this was a concept that you should just roll out, you wanted to go onto the next project?
Paloma Strelitz
I think that just wasn’t the stage that we were at. We’d always conceived this as a sort of temporary experience so it really hadn’t been set up to scale up and I think we, for us particularly at that stage, this was really about creating a testing ground where we could prototype and experiment with ideas which we’d begun to think about, which both related to the kind of forms of practice so how we did things and we were still learning because we were sort of so freshly out of university but also with ideas that we had for the city.
Susan Freeman
And interesting that you talk about a testing ground and experimenting because one of the criticisms of the real estate sector is that people aren’t prepared to experiment because they’re so concerned about failing so, that rather hampers innovation. So, you sort of moved forward with a number of other projects and then in 2015 Assemble caused quite a stir by winning the Turner Prize. I mean that’s traditionally, that traditionally goes to fine art practitioners and your project was a community project in Liverpool. How did that come about?
Paloma Strelitz
Well, I think that as I you know talked about a bit with the Cineroleum, we’d always, we’d always kind of delivered projects on a very public stage and that’s very much part of our ethos, which is kind of using design or using architecture or using experience as a way to kind of open up opportunity or open up ways for people to participate so, that was always very central to our ethos and that’s something which we had already begun to talk about and also our projects were always, have always been quite theatrical and quite immersive and so I think that that gave people quite new ways into these sorts of experiences. So, and those, you know some of the values which really informed the work that we have been doing in Granby in Liverpool and we have been working alongside the Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust, which is a community led group who are, had been you know fighting and advocating for a long time to save their neighbourhood in Granby, Toxteth, from you know from decline, from demolition and so we worked alongside them to create a community led vision for their neighbourhood and that proposed sort of series of interventions which were not about a grand master plan but really kind of creating a playbook that could think at a local scale, so a series of small-scale interventions which could help build you know affordable community housing, help build embedded cultural spaces, help build local social enterprises and we had basically begun completing the first stage of that which was the kind of creation of affordable homes which would be held in perpetuity at affordable rents and we’d sort of applied to that principles of you know sort of an arts and crafts like movement which said you know how do you kind of, how do you manifest visible care into these projects to that you know, our budgets are limited but it’s really clear that these are spaces to be nurtured and cared for and I think that that’s kind of combined, those combined sets of interests really represented a set of values and impulses which the kind Turner Prize judging committee were interested in, which were around social practice and socially engaged art.
Susan Freeman
And did this sort of carry on? I mean you, did you create affordable housing that…?
Paloma Strelitz
Yes. So, there’s, there have always been a number of stages to the project and the first set of houses were, the delivery was finished around 2016. Two of the projects which kind of gained enormous impetus after we won the Turner Prize were the launch of Granby Workshop, which is a manufacturer of bespoke architectural ceramics and in fact we used the Turner Prize exhibition to launch that project and to create this initiative which is still going and then the second was to raise money to create the Granby Winter Garden, which is a winter garden and community centre, which is built out of the ruins of two of the previously derelict houses on Cairns Street in Liverpool.
Susan Freeman
That sounds pretty, pretty amazing and did it come as a surprise when you, when you won the Turner Prize or did you have any inkling that it was coming?
Paloma Strelitz
You know, we didn’t know it was coming. We received a surprise phone call one day from the Head of The Tate and it took us, it took us by complete surprise. I think at first we kind of really questioned it too and I think it was a useful moment of reflection because when we looked back at our previous work, I think it was kind of clearer how we were sort of situated within a sort of certain artistic tradition in terms of you know public artwork really and sort of socially engaged practice so, I think that began, that helped us make sense of it but it also gave us the impetus to really use the platform as an opportunity to spearhead or sort of scale up some of the projects or ideas that we’d already had with the CLT in the neighbourhood.
Susan Freeman
What you learned on the Liverpool project, did it sort of change you know the way you went ahead with future projects or were they sort of similar projects to the ones that you’d done before?
Paloma Strelitz
I think that there have always been a sort of set of ideas which have, had evolved and found new forms of expression and of course we, you know we started Assemble when we were very young, we were learning too and we were learning more sophisticated ways of doing things, ways or tactics to make sure that the projects that we did were more sustainable and so I think what, you know what the kind of the joy of looking at a neighbourhood does, is that it gives you an ecosystem. There are so many factors at play, you’re not just looking at housing or you’re not just looking at workspace, we were not just looking at cultural space. You are really saying how do I create a lively, sustainable, mixed ecosystem where there are ways for different people to get involved and I think that’s a kind of, a really valuable exercise for anybody looking at the city to say how do these begin to really work together because for me that sort of vision of the mixed neighbourhood is something that I take as you know, an ideal and I want to see how we can have more environments where there is a kind of, a productive mix which you know alongside, a productive mix and a diverse range of people living and working alongside each other.
Susan Freeman
There’s a sort of set of questions there that a lot of people are asking themselves at the moment in terms of you know how we improve our cities and since, I mean you’ve been working in this area, I mean is there anything that you’ve learned as you’ve gone along that has sort of come as a surprise to you?
Paloma Strelitz
I would say that… I would sort of probably you know adjust what you said and say we haven’t created anything from scratch, I think the thing that we have really learned is to when we sort of starting working on a project or start working with the community or start working in an area, is to really understand all the dynamics at play and all the people and all the groups and all the organisations who are already doing incredibly good work on the ground and you know there were always occasions where we would go to a new place and someone would say “Oh nothing’s really happening there. There’s nothing going on. You won’t find anything to sort of work with or anyone to work alongside” and that categorically proved untrue in every single scenario. There’s always, you know there’s always community, there are always people trying to make their lives and their neighbourhoods better and to sort of forge a positive future and we always found people to work alongside and we found that kind of our role within that was to elevate, convene, celebrate and as part of that, use architecture or design as a tool to yeah, to sort of celebrate and make visible those things which were already happening and you know hopefully help them go further with the kind of the platform or the infrastructure that we were providing.
Susan Freeman
Interesting. Possibly, not something that your average property developer will do when they sort of move into an area, possibly not sort of engaging with the community at every level and, as you say, you know celebrating what’s, what’s already going on.
Paloma Strelitz
I just think that everywhere has a distinct heritage. Everyone has a you know a neighbourhood of people living, trying to make their lives better, everyone has needs, everyone has aspirations and I think that if you’re going to go and build and certainly if you have you know you’re trying to build to last or if you have long term objectives or you, you know your ambition is to kind create positive impacts which are, you know, I would hope would be the lens with which anyone kind of goes into an area then I think that there are some of these things which you should be trying to do. Now, there is no perfect playbook, no one is going to get it right all the time, there are always community sensitivities but I think the first step is really to, to try and engage and open up, you know try as much as possible to open up the process to other people.
Susan Freeman
And how do you reckon London is doing compared to other sort of major sort of world cities in terms of you know moving the city forward, sort of adapting to what people want now post-pandemic?
Paloma Strelitz
I think that’s a really interesting question. I think that there are some really fantastic examples of recent public spaces which I sort of, which have been created in London which I sort of struggle to see how, you know see comparators for in other world cities, you know I’m a big fan of the work that Argent did in King’s Cross, I think you know Granary Square is a set piece for a new urban development is really fantastic and I’m excited to see how it sort of evolves and matures because I also think the thing with kind of place making is that it’s never going to be perfect on day one, I think most of the spaces we love most have matured and evolved over time. Evidently, there is a real challenge around affordability and housing and I think that that is going to continue to be a struggle as we move forwards, you know my vision of an ideal London is one that is mixed, that has people from different economic backgrounds, different cultural backgrounds, all living together, all in proximity to opportunity and resources and I think that you know the rise of housing prices in recent years is, has created a real challenge to that, you know that vision of London.
Susan Freeman
I mean it’s interesting, I mean I always use Mayfair as an example but you know people think of Mayfair as being you know very, very expensive area to live in but if you actually look around, you’ll see that you know there are Peabody, you know social housing blocks, side by side you know with you know shops and also the sort of more expensive housing so, it has a sort of villagey feel about it and it does seem to mix you know different people together but we seem to have sort of moved away from that. So, I’m really sort of intrigued by the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard which you were awarded in I think 2019 to 2020. How did that come about and what did you learn from that because you were, I think you spent a year at Harvard with access to all sorts of amazing facilities?
Paloma Strelitz
Yes so, I was doing a talk at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design when someone mentioned to me the programme for the first time and the Loeb Fellowship is a programme for practitioners who’ve worked for positive social impact in the built environment and it’s really an extraordinary opportunity to kind of come to Harvard for the year, be part of this cohort of other practitioners and to build your own programme across Harvard’s different schools. So you know I joined a cohort of amazing you know international fellows, one of whom had been head of transport policy for Uber, one of whom is now Athens’ Chief Heat Officer, you know one of whom was a curator of art and design for the National Museum of African American History so, people with very different perspectives and experiences but all focussed around cities and the built environment and I built a programme of sort of different courses, mostly focussed at Harvard’s Kennedy School and the Business School, taking courses on a range of subjects but primarily focussed on how you could use technology to scale social impact. That was something which I was incredibly interested in focussing on, particularly because I think you know I saw it as a building on my experience at Assemble where we worked on these incredibly meaningful projects, which tended to be hyper localised and I was saying what other, how can we draw together some of the learnings from these projects to really scale some of this, you know scale some of these ideas, scale the impact and you know I sort of saw technology as a key tool to doing that.
Susan Freeman
How interesting and was there any lightbulb moment, you know when you were there sort of immersed in all this academia and with all these incredibly sort of bright people from all over the world?
Paloma Strelitz
I mean there were so many brilliant lightbulb moments but I think actually it was quite meaningful being there at the point when we went into lockdown which was at the sort of point after Spring break because I’d been experiencing all these classes in person and there was a real joy to that and you know each class at say the Kennedy School felt like sitting in a mini United Nations, it was so international, there were so many people with interesting and diverse perspectives and experiences from across the world and it was such a dynamic experience and kind of inhabiting the sort of the Harvard theatre and then there was that sort of sudden switch to online and actually, I found it quite exciting in many ways to see that, experience that pivot through the lens of education because it was a moment when you saw what powerful educational learning experiences you could still forge online at a moment’s notice and you know one of the classes which I enjoyed the most was a class on international negotiation and it was led by a professor called Robert Wilkinson and you know he was so expert in person in the classroom but it switched to online and he was just as powerful and I’d always had this, probably sort of slightly outdated view of education as a slightly boutique experience when I was at Cambridge, it was sort of a selling point that there were only forty people in the class and suddenly you were sitting in this online learning environment with a lot of, a lot more people and that it still felt bespoke and it still felt meaningful and it still felt exciting and I think that was a moment when you say, what can, you know, what can a sort of technology led education experience look like and how brilliant if that can bring really meaningful experiences to a lot more people.
Susan Freeman
Yes, I think we were all quite amazed how we somehow managed to switch to you know online communication and working online with Zoom and Teams, I mean it was a real lifesaver. And did you, you were focussing on technology’s ability to power inclusive change. Did you come out sort of thinking, with any thoughts as to how we can embrace technology and improve social inclusion?
Paloma Strelitz
Well I think that really builds on my previous point which is around democratising access to opportunity and you know tech scope to kind of to power that sort of inclusive change and obviously there are many, many modes that that can happen in in the world that I’m now looking in is the world of sort of the world of work, the world of sort of access to if you like talent and opportunity and I think that was one of my takeaways which was that this change is going to be wholesale and that we are just at the beginning of it.
Susan Freeman
Yes, it’s exciting and sort of quite scary isn’t it, in equal measure. So, after Harvard did you have thoughts as to which direction your pivot was going to take you in or did you take some time to just you know just think about the experiences that you’d had?
Paloma Strelitz
It was a definitely a combination of the two, you know I got involved in a sort of series of freelance projects as way to explore new ideas as I came back to London, one of the ones I really enjoyed the most was working with Naresh Ramchandani at Pentagram on brand strategy, that was a really exciting way I found than having to sort of deep dive into a whole range companies who are facing new challenges and trying to look for their way to kind of articulate their position going forwards. Another thing I did was join the first cohort of the Newton Venture Programme which is a programme that’s been launched by Local Globe and The London Business School trying to create a more inclusive ecosystem of tech investors and it was sort of within those months following, being at Harvard that I met Freddie from Patch and he was in the process of sort of launching Patch and the Work Near Home vision and that’s when, that’s when I thought this sounds like, this sounds like the journey which I want to go on.
Susan Freeman
And how did you meet Freddie Fforde?
Paloma Strelitz
So, Freddie had, as I said Freddie was in the process of launching Patch and he had recently published his sort of manifesto for the Work Near Home vision on LinkedIn and said you know I’m looking for someone to join the founding team as our first senior hire and Head of Product and I read his vision and I thought this is really exciting, it both felt very intuitive to me and also quite radical, you know what does this new Work Near Home ecosystem begin to look like and I happened to only see it because a sort of an old friend of mine had liked his post and then it came up on my feed so, I reached out to her and said you know what do you think, I mean I think this looks like an interesting opportunity and she was so unbelievably positive about Freddie and said he’s just brilliant, you have to speak to him, so she introduced us and you know we just, we met and we went for a walk round my own neighbourhood, just exploring some of the ideas which he was thinking about and they just really resonated with me and I thought he had such an interesting set of experiences, really more from the sort of business and startup world which complemented my own, more creative background but I thought it’s going to be really exciting to see if we can, you know what we can build here.
Susan Freeman
No, I agree, I must have met Freddie at the same, at the same time. Somebody said oh you know you must, must talk to him, he’s doing something really interesting and he is very impressive and very inspiring so, Freddie, I hope you’re listening. So, let’s talk a little bit about Patch and what the vision is and how it’s going now that you are able to put it into practice in Chelmsford.
Paloma Strelitz
So, you know, our kind of point of view is that where, when and how we work isn’t going to be the same again and that there really is this sort of new era which is beginning to emerge for Work Near Home services and so I think at Patch we think that we’ve got a really a once in a generation opportunity which is to define this new category and what we really want to do is to kind of create opportunity for work, people and communities on every high street and in order to do that we’re sort of building patches and we opened our first one in Chelmsford in November and it’s a, it’s kind of a starter for a sort of Work Near Home ecosystem and it’s you know, the first step is really about giving people an exciting, dynamic space on their high street where they can convene to work and I think there’s this idea that kind of high quality of exciting workspaces are, that there’s huge numbers of them and I think that’s true, in central London there is a high density of I think some of these types of offerings but actually beyond central London and perhaps beyond some of the tier one cities, that range really falls off quite quickly and that people do not have access to dynamic professional communities necessarily or do not have, you know do not have spaces that they can easily access where they can you know forge new communities, work in an exciting environment, attend interesting events and so that’s kind of part one for us. So, in November we opened our first space in Chelmsford, that’s in a historic kind of Victorian brewery that’s right in the most exciting part of town, it’s close to the best restaurants, it’s close to all the shops, it’s about a kind of vote of confidence in your local high street or town centre saying, this is the best place for you to be and you know what, you get to avoid the cost and the pain of the commute and you get, as part of this equation, you get to spend more time with friends and family and in your community and there are other positives associated with that such as, you know, investing in the local economy, investing in the high street and really seeing the sort of increased sort of sustainability and resilience of the place that you have chosen to call home so, for us it’s part of personal vision but it’s part of a much bigger, positive, social vision.
Susan Freeman
So, Patch is different from what is available on your local high street at the moment?
Paloma Strelitz
I think that most people do not have interesting local offers. There are in some instances sort of boutique, independent offerings which really kind of cover a range of quality… qualities and sort of values but there is no, if you like, consumer facing workspace brand which is looking in the same way as building a kind… a national network of spaces and communities.
Susan Freeman
And what does, what does a patch look like? What’s it like on the ground?
Paloma Strelitz
So, we really see Patch as the new anchor of the high street and as part of that, we want you know this workspace as, as an anchor, to feel as publicly accessible as possible. So, we think of the ground floor really as a local, as an accessible, local, public space. At the moment, we have kind of three components to that. There’s a front door that you know always open during main operating hours, you don’t need a key card for access, we want people to come in, we want people to explore, we want people to understand how they might interact with Patch and the sort of the Work Near Home world that we’re building. We have Patch Academy that’s a sort of flexible learning and events base, which is a space which you might, which is again very visible as you enter the reception, it’s about really elevating and celebrating local activity, be that the Women in Business networking event or be that someone who you know operates a online brand who’s looking for a space to host a series of workshops in. We also have Patch Markets which is going to be the sort of, which is more like a café and bar but is also effectively a, you know flexible events space. So, the ground floor is all about public access, convening, meeting, hosting of activity and then upstairs we move to the more private spaces, you know of the workspace and that is a mixture of spaces to reflect the different working rhythms and also, you know, different membership offerings. We start with Community, which is access to the workspace just one day a month but that’s really important to us because again this is all about you know lowering the barrier to accessing interesting professional communities and that obviously ladders up to private offices which are at the moment primarily used by local SMEs who are building their teams and companies.
Susan Freeman
And is it family friendly?
Paloma Strelitz
Absolutely it’s family friendly. So, a huge part of this, of the vision for Patch is about people spending more time with friends, family and in their community and on our ground floor we have a kids’ corner, we are actually doing a partnership with a company called Whirli who are a sort of sustainable toy subscription company at… to sort of fit that out and create a space where people feel welcome to bring their kids in. I think a huge difference that you get in terms of operating in a city like Chelmsford say versus Farringdon, is that people are working close to where their kids are going to school and that means that after school you know their kids want to pop by and say ‘Hi’ or they might want a quiet spot where they can do their homework or it might be the middle of the week and a day when a parent isn’t working but they still can pop in and go to the kids’ corner just to take a breather whilst they’re you know shopping in town and we haven’t worked out you know Chelmsford is our first space, we’re testing many of these ideas, we’re not entirely sure at this point where we’re… how they’re going to develop or grow in future sites, particularly as they grow in scale but some of… but doing some of these things from the beginning was really important to us and we just wanted to clearly signify to families with children that you are welcome here and that you’ve got permission to bring your kids in.
Susan Freeman
Well that certainly goes, goes beyond some of the other flexible working spaces you know which are dog friendly but child friendly is definitely, is definitely new. So, I mean what are you learning now that you’ve actually got people coming in, they’re using the space, what are you learning that you didn’t necessarily know about Chelmsford?
Paloma Strelitz
Well there’s a lot that you know neither Freddie nor I were particularly familiar with Chelmsford beforehand and so we’ve had you know the Patch has been a wonderful platform for us to get to know people better. I think that a really welcome revelation for us was just how supportive the council has been both in terms of welcoming us in but also in terms of facilitating introductions and now using our space so, I think looking at like the you know the Patch vision, it was always fairly clear that that should align pretty closely with sort of local authority objectives in terms of building resilience and opportunity in their local opportunities. But the question always is, you know what is the appetite and how, you know how willing are they to partner or to work or you know in either formal or informal capacities. We’ve had an incredibly warm reception to Chelmsford and it’s given us huge confidence going forwards in terms of what we can build if we are working alongside local authorities, so much so that we you know appointed Jamie Dundas as Head of Network who’s you know role is specifically to try to understand what those opportunities might be in various you know with various local authorities and across various areas in the UK and that’s just really important for us in terms… as we look to scale up because actually it’s quite, it’s quite hard to know what opportunities are out there. A lot of people are doing hard work on the ground and have worked quite successfully in order to secure grants or secure sites and might be in a position of looking to you know work alongside an operator but are very much within their own sort of search process and we found being proactive, setting up conversations and trying to understand the various sort of needs and aspirations has really begun to open some doors for us and again, it’s like impressive to see how much hard work is being done already.
Susan Freeman
That’s really terrific and I mean for the I suppose professionals and business people in the area, this must be like the first time they’ve had the opportunity to actually come together you know meet each other in this sort of space, I mean are you seeing that sort of activity?
Paloma Strelitz
Absolutely. You know we did an evening about a month ago which was called Founder Stories, Launching a Local Business and that was held at Patch Academy and each of the speakers was a Patch member who also is a founder and it was just so brilliant to feel this kind of this professional community coming together around a, you know, and discussing their professional goals but also their aspirations for the area and you know as I said before it’s not, those people were already operating before Patch, we didn’t, you know that’s not a framework which we set up but actually we’ve created a platform where they are able to convene, to come together and that in itself creates new opportunities and I do think that what’s interesting in a place like Chelmsford is, there is I think a huge sense of optimism and energy that this is a sort of turning point that historically, so many of these people were commuting five days a week into London, that they didn’t have the time or the resources to necessarily invest locally as much as they might have liked and now they’re spending a lot more time, again as I said, in this sort of place that they’ve chosen to call home and they’re beginning to look around and say you know what how can we make the change that we want to happen in our own neighbourhoods?
Susan Freeman
And do you think that you know the way that we’re now working will continue or are people going to drift back to commuting because that is, you know that’s the way they were used to working?
Paloma Strelitz
I fully believe that the future is hybrid. I don’t think there’s going to be a singular approach. I have a pluralistic vision and absolutely, I am sure some people are going to be commuting more than they are today and going into central London but I think that’s, I’m pretty, I’m you know willing to back that’s going to increasingly rarely be five days a week so, you know, there’s nothing at odds with the Patch vision saying you might be going into central London you know on a Monday or a Monday and a Wednesday but the question is, what are you doing with the rest of the time and how do you want to be working and how do you want to be living and that’s when we say for those people there’s a really strong case to be coming to Patch, perhaps two days a week, for others Patch is the right, is the right product five days a week and for others it might just be, you know, once a month but there’s definitely going to be an increased mosaic of different working styles and rhythms and what we want to do is to say we are the space that can support you locally whatever you are looking for.
Susan Freeman
So, it’s a, it’s a great opportunity for local high streets and towns that were, you know, in the past just hollowed out during the day because everybody just got on the, you know in their car on the train and went off to an office so, there is now that the opportunity, I mean you know something like this is the beginning of regenerating you know a lot of businesses that probably you know found it hard to you know to make money because people weren’t there during the week.
Paloma Strelitz
We hope so, we really want to be part of a positive ecosystem of different local operators. We are, you know, really looking for opportunities to work with local operators and suppliers. We want to see this as Patch as a platform for basically you know giving people greater agency over their lives, over their work, over their you know over their sort of ambitions and we hope that there are lots of different ways of interacting with us and that that will become clearer as we grow in scale so, at this point in time, the Patch space we have in Chelmsford is about, probably about 70% workspace, 30% sort of public space or other amenity but we’re already looking at that kind of percentage changing as we scale and we’re looking towards, you know towards the sort of near distant future where we take over the old Debenhams building and that the Work Near Home offering is a much more complex offer of different spaces and services and opportunities which all align with this sort of vision around a more sustainable, local future.
Susan Freeman
So, can you, can you see Patch taking over the whole of a sort of former Debenhams store?
Paloma Strelitz
Absolutely. I think the point is within that, at that scale, that’s when we will really need to start looking at the kind of the range of, the range of other operators who sort of sit within our space so, you know there’s huge… and how can we become this sort of, how can we become a platform which can both help create new opportunities for local operators but also create opportunities for people who are trying to launch I would say sort of particularly sort of social impact startup ideas in new markets so, I think that traditionally smaller towns have been harder places for new companies to access and we want to be the platform into many of those organisations because, you know, because helping people say you don’t need to go to London in order to access the newest and the most exciting is part, is really part of our mission, it’s about saying it can actually be also accessible close to home.
Susan Freeman
Sounds, it does sound really exciting. So, what sort of sites are you looking for? I mean, is it the former department store? I mean, are you, I mean local authorities must be coming to you now with, you know with quite a lot of opportunities?
Paloma Strelitz
People are coming to us with interesting opportunities but you know we also want to be specific about choosing the right sites and you know we are looking for spaces which have a strong character, a sort of sense of civic presence and that are located within I’d say the most exciting part of town. It’s really important for us to be an attractor and to kind of help people access all the things which they might think are sort of best about their area so, I’d say one example of a space which we’ve been kind of presented with a few times which I would say is a bit of a challenge to us, is a you know is a unit in a struggling shopping centre. Now that doesn’t instantly appeal to a sort of set of values which we have although it’s not to say we’d never do it, what we are really looking for is a space which kind of, which has a sense of autonomy, has a sense of civic pride, has a sense that it is giving back and is part of the history and identity of an area and I think that’s why the brewery in Chelmsford is such a great example, it’s a sort of historic landmark building which was a local employer, has… was the centre of its sort of, Chelmsford’s historic commercial life and now has an opportunity kind of to forge a new identity as a launchpad for local enterprise.
Susan Freeman
And in addition to that, do you see an online role for Patch or is it all going to be the physical amenities?
Paloma Strelitz
No, we’re extremely excited about the online, the online community which Patch is going to build. We do see it as an online platform. I think that you know that particularly as we scale, we’re interested in how we can bring more people into the Work Near Home world and community. So, I’ll take one example, we currently have Patch Academy which is a physical space and is the place where you can go to access new ideas, new skills and new opportunities and we very much see a digital equivalent of that which will again be about kind of bringing opportunity and ideas to people regardless of where they live. I think actually even at the stage that we’ve… we’ve seen some interesting opportunities around us, you know one example is that we have you know it’s pretty modest, is that we have a Slack channel for all the members in our community but actually some of the feedback that we’ve got which has just been interesting to hear is that people you know, that people say that even on days when they’re not coming into Patch, it’s really nice for them to still be part of that Slack community and take part in you know, in the conversation, in the dialogue but from home and so I think we’re beginning to see that people are beginning to access Patch even when they’re not physically at Patch and we’re, we’re early days here but that’s something which we’re really looking towards building on in the next 24 months.
Susan Freeman
That’s so interesting because I imagine that people are missing the sort of I suppose the camaraderie and the sort of social side of being in an office and they’re now, you know, in many cases, not in an office every day so this could pick up what people are sort of missing as they are sitting alone.
Paloma Strelitz
Absolutely. I think I went to a talk recently were Noreena Hertz was talking about her book The Lonely Century and she was just talking about, you know I know that book was sort of written pre-Covid but she was really talking about how we are all seeking connection and feelings of connectiveness and one thing that she focussed on that I found really interesting was the value of micro connections so, the value of just walking into a space and someone saying hello to you and recognising you and asking you how you are and these should be really, you know these are such simple things but these are things which people have been lacking throughout Covid and I think going forwards there’s a, there’s you know there’s a strong case for being apparently personally a lot more intentional about how we seek connection, how we seek community, saying actually you know occasionally being based at home five days a week might feel very comfortable but perhaps there’s something I’m lacking here and perhaps if there’s a space where I can go into, whatever that space is, where I know that someone will say hello, where I can find someone to have a coffee with, where I can ask someone about this problem that I’m having with a work task, you know that will be a positive step to helping me feel more connected again.
Susan Freeman
Well it sounds, I mean it sounds, sounds fascinating and I’m going to sort of watch with great interest how this takes off. I just wanted to digress slightly and just ask you, I can see from your CV that you were a Design Advocate to the Mayor of London for the period, well 2017 to 2021 and I just wondered what that entailed and, you know, what the challenges were?
Paloma Strelitz
I think it was a really interesting group to be part of, it was the first time that they’d sort of pioneered this programme of design advocates from a range of backgrounds within the built environment and the mandate was really to try to you know improve the quality and build capacity of you know of projects have been built and created in London. So, there were discussions on the New London Plan for example but one of the kind of key elements was really engaging with design review so, I think it was primarily projects which have received funding from the GLA and looking with the people leading those projects and people designing those to see how you could really enhance quality and maybe this is a sort of nice moment to come full circle because I think actually one of the last design reviews I did before going to the US was at the National Youth Theatre’s headquarters which are on Holloway Road and they’d just undergone a, they were undergoing a process to reimagine their sort of flagship space and they were working with the architects, CFBHA, and again they were at this moment of saying we’ve been in this sort of semi-provisional space for a long time which really hasn’t sort of signified to the public that we are here and that we’re all about access and about celebrating young people and their talent and so they were sort of undergoing this transformation and it was, and it was an organisation which said I’d sort of experienced as a teenager and it was so great to be part of that dialogue and that discussion in terms of saying, you know, how can we make sure that what is created here attracts and supports and excites as many young people as possible to sort of enter the world of theatre.
Susan Freeman
Just, I mean talking about young, young people, I mean one of the issues that gets discussed quite a lot on this podcast is, you know, how we bring younger people from different backgrounds into real estate because it’s, you know it’s, real estate tends to have a bit of a negative image and it is challenging to get young people to think about it as a career path, I mean how do you see it now you are sort of within the world of real estate, I mean how do you see it? What are we getting wrong in terms of you know projecting our image and getting our messages out?
Paloma Strelitz
One thing that I always… when I looked around at Assemble, one thing which we always sort of perceived was that people don’t feel like they have a huge amount of agency in their built environment, that the city is something which is created by other people and that what we wanted to really do was to kind of create pathways in and to give people a sense that they had greater agency in shaping the world around them and so from my own experience, I don’t see that as a small task, I think that, that the way that you know the way that large developments happen that it can create a huge amount of anxiety and displacement and even if you think of the impact of a development which might open you know sort of five, seven years down the line and open up a huge, a whole new sort of set of resources or opportunities, what happens in the interim, you have seven years of hoarding, you have seven years of construction sites, that is a child’s entire experience and I say all that just to say I understand that it presents a challenge and you know I just think that visibility and advocacy and you know intentional pathways in are probably the only ways that you’re going to begin to counteract some of that and so you know I do think that education is key, I think that organisations like Open City, which is led by Phin Harper, do a fantastic job trying to kind of promote the built environment to more diverse communities and I just think there’s a lot more hard work to be done there.
Susan Freeman
I think you are right, I think it is hard work and you know some of the programmes like Pathways to Property, we have you know that involves going, you know people going into schools and talking to you know hundreds and thousands of school children but then even then it’s going to take, it’s going to take a few years to play out. And just finally Paloma before we finish, is there anybody who has been a role model or inspiration to you?
Paloma Strelitz
You know, I don’t think I have any singular role models but one thing that I have found along my own professional journey, is just so many people to have open conversations with. I’ve really valued, at different moments and different times, having people to reach out to as a sounding board, to explore ideas, to say, understand where I’m at, understand where I’m interested in heading, explore challenges with projects, with ideas and so, you know I try my best to be as open as possible if people approach me, I am always incredibly grateful when people are, you know, do the same at their end and so I think that there is a kind of an increasing culture of you know pass it on if you like and that is something that I am grateful for so, you know I’m, I think if my experience has taught me anything, it’s probably not to rely on that sort of singular opportunity or that singular individual but say, you know there’s a, there’s a mosaic, an ecosystem of sort of people with different perspectives out there that you never want to be reliant on one of those but to get, but taken together, they can provide enormous inspiration, enormous strength and a whole you know world of opportunity and ideas.
Susan Freeman
I think, I think that’s great, that’s great advice. So, Paloma, thank you so much for your time today and I will watch with huge interest how, how Patch expands and to keep in touch.
Paloma Strelitz
Absolutely. And actually, you know I am going to add one last point if that’s okay, which is to say you know Patch is a really early stage company, we’ve got a big vision for the Work Near Home world and if there’s anyone listening who would like to talk to us about that, please reach out to Freddie or myself because we’re really excited to bring Patch to a high street or town centre close to you.
Susan Freeman
Fantastic. Thanks Paloma.
Paloma Strelitz
Thanks Susan.
Susan Freeman
Thank you, Paloma, for your unique view on creating places and in particular, a different and more socially inclusive working environment. We’re all going to be watching Patch’s progress with great interest. So, that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed today’s conversation. Please join us for the next PropertyShe podcast interview coming very soon.
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