David Taylor catches up with Heather Macey of John McAslan + Partners to chat about ‘We’re not bad kids’ – a new film and research initiative she has developed with Miranda MacLaren and Palina Pencheva of Morris + Company to highlight youth homelessness and push for more guidelines over emergency accommodation

David Taylor: Heather, hi! How are you?

Heather Macey: Oh, yeah, good thanks. How are you doing?

DT: Yeah, very good, thanks. You have launched this new film: We're not bad kids. Could you tell us about that in its broadest sense? Presumably it's to address a homelessness issue that has probably got worse during Covid. Is that right?

 

HM: So, it's a film which has been made by Odelay Films as part of a wider research initiative developed by me, Miranda MacLaren and Polina Pencheva [of Morris and Co]. Our initiative looks to address youth homelessness in London, which as you rightly say has got dramatically worse since Covid-19. Our research looks to address the shocking lack of purpose-built accommodation for young people who are homeless – to catch them at the start of the process before they hit the street. The emergency accommodation which currently exists is generally not fit for purpose and is often hostile and dangerous for young people. Our research looks to provide guidance to address this and ensure that supportive dignified spaces are provided. The research is split into three volumes – Manifesto, Leading by Example and Recommendations. These essentially comprise a Case for Change, some benchmarks of good built examples and finally our design advice for projects of this nature.

 

The film is essentially aligned with the first volume and looks to really clearly define the problem through in a more immediate way to a wider audience.  We hope that the film will highlight this desperate need for change and encourage the GLA and local boroughs to adopt this policy to address the issue and ensure good quality emergency accommodation is a basic requirement not a rarity.

Still from We're not bad kids © Odelay Films

DT: I haven't seen the film yet because it's not available as yet but will be this week – but I'm reminded of Cathy Come Home, the 1966 film by Ken Loach addressing homelessness which apparently was very powerful in that period. Why did you choose the medium of film?

 

HM: Interesting. So: I think the film looks to highlight young people's formative life experience to really explain and give a greater visibility of what homelessness is. I think there's a lot of misconceptions – you know, people are somehow homeless by a fault of their own or other circumstances when the reality is these people have just been put in a very unfair, unfortunate situation. And I think film really helps to brings it down to the individuals and the human experience. Hopefully what that does is contextualises a subject, homelessness, as relating to people and not being something which is often seen as a kind of a problem – why should it be addressed, and strengthening the need for a change of approach with a holistic vision. 

 

DT: Do you think London has this problem especially acutely?

HM: I mean obviously cities are busier, and homelessness is a higher occurrence in the city, for sure. The housing crisis and cost of living definitely makes people that are just on the edge of homelessness and falling into homelessness much easier to do. Yeah, I think it does.

DT: Why are you especially charged by this issue? What is it that hits home so much for you?

HM: I think all of us and definitely me personally, who work in the built environment, every day we are producing and generating housing which is support for the city. But as it stands, policy and the kind of projects that we're working on do not currently address the homeless issue. And I think any projects that you see today that do do that have been realised through extreme dedication and determination from various individuals. That's not just architects. That’s charities, developers and even councils coming together. As people that work in the built environment profession, I feel like we have we have a responsibility to adjust housing to everybody. And ‘everybody’ includes obviously this demographic, which does not get equal representation to the rest of society today.

Still from We're not bad kids © Odelay Films

DT: So: what's the big thing that needs to change from your perspective, if you could wave a magic wand?

HM: Well I mean the obvious answer to that is policy. It's not fair to just say change policy because it's much more complicated than that, and I think it’s joined-up thinking. The best projects or the projects that have actually been realised have worked because various disciplines are coming together to realise these projects. But yeah, for policy to change I mean obviously this film and our initiative currently is looking at - we hope that what we've done is written guidelines which demystify the process. And if they were to be embedded or could become policy or substitution for the London Housing Design Guide or other methods of policy then it not only controls the type of development coming forward, but it also offers a route forward for people that want to realise these projects. So I think it’s policy but intelligent policy that is developed alongside a collaborative and caring group.

DT:  Has anything else arisen from that competition you ran that Morris and Co were triumphant in?  Has that progressed at all?

HM: At the time we hoped that one real life project would come out of that.  It was the catalyst really for Architects Aware, which is our policy group, and I'd say the people that came together for that group have been incredibly instrumental in bringing forward these guidelines. So in terms of how that project has come forward I'd say it's brought people together to offer a coherent group to deliver, we hope, multiple projects. We've developed a huge body of research in various aspects of homelessness, so we understand it a little more, and it's obviously raised awareness. 

And it's not ended, because currently I'm teaching at the London School of Architecture, and I formed a research group which is called LSA Collaborate. So that research and that group are now going forward with a kind of academic focus and talking to bodies like the GLA and TfL and others about how we might do more innovative research to ensure these projects come forward. So I think it has got a wider reach. It's currently at a research level but it's looking to realise real life projects. So I don't think it's over. I see it as the beginning of a long journey of multiple projects and multiple interests and hopefully change in the world of homelessness in the built environment.

Shelter from the Storm, Holland Harvey Architects © Nicholas Worley