Hi, Joss. How are you doing? 

 

Very well. Nice to be speaking to you.

 

I wanted to find out a little bit about Populate. Aside from the fact that Socius launched this place management side of the business, in October last year, I don't know much about it, so I wonder if you could explain its aim and its principles? 

 

Yes, sure. So, as you mentioned, Populate is a wholly-owned company launched by Socius, and its real focus is on supporting our investors and places to maximize the potential and value from the buildings, but with a people-first approach to it. We ensure the quality of the experience is embedded into the thinking and design of developments from a really early stage, and obviously, the advantage of being a sister company of a developer is that we get to work alongside the development team right from the beginning. So, we're able to deliver early activation and develop a place management strategy that will fit the place for the long term, bringing in tech or different innovations, putting social impact sustainability at the core of it, working on how that site functions from day one. So: the creation of a dynamic place that delivers a real social impact. And actually, we can drive certain levels of standards around sustainability, or, going back to that social impact point, because we know that that will attract and retain occupiers’ long term and then drive a place identity. So, we are able to sit alongside the developer, if that happens. 

 

Could you give me some real-life examples of this kind of principle in play? I know you're working at the London Cancer Hub in Sutton, and also Edward Street Quarter, which is near where I live in Brighton. What are the principles you've put in place right from day one in both of those projects that exemplify this approach? 

 

I would say London Cancer Hub is just an incredible project, full stop, really. It's huge, which is brilliant, and the scale of opportunity within that is massive. Socius and our partner within that, Aviva, have taken a really good and proactive approach to embed a number of early activation projects before they've even submitted planning. We're on site at the moment, and we've done a huge amount of research and engagement with immediate stakeholders. We've got the Institute for Cancer Research, we've got Royal Marsden, we've got a Maggie's Centre and a Harris Academy secondary school all directly neighbouring our site. So, we're really looking at going beyond a project-specific red line and seeing that as our place. And as a result of that, we've looked at what we can do with the land, like I said, even before we go into planning. We've got early plans to have Padel courts; we're going to have four Padel courts that are going to be operated by Social Sports Society, who align with that point I was making earlier about the social impact of a space. So, it's not just about chucking in a sports offer, because, actually, that's a good thing; a good meanwhile use is looking at what can that deliver for those people? 

 

Padel is being used a lot, isn't it, across the country as a sort of meanwhile use, almost a knee jerk... 

 

Yes! Look, it's a practical response to space, right? Because, you can go in there, and you can fairly easily install it, but that takes from us. We've made an investment in the space to be able to deliver that. We've also spent a lot of time working to get the right operator in. But it absolutely wasn't a knee jerk reaction, because it was based on this idea that in the current campus Institute for Cancer Research Royal Marsden, a lot of the staff there actually are turning up for work, and there isn't a huge amount of socializing that they can do in the space. They're working in fairly clinical environments, so actually being able to walk out on your lunch break or before work with colleagues and/or friends and play a game, it's actually a really transformative moment for them! And on the back of that, we're working to open a new food and beverage offer, reusing an empty utility building on site. So, coming back to that sustainability point. And again, the ethos of that is very much going to be a people-led approach. So: can we find local operators to go in there? Can it be a really fluid space? So, we're not just going to turn up and stick in a food and beverage offer. That's not the point. It's about making a venue an exciting place to be. So, it will be a multi-use space. I think that's a really good modern approach to how you utilize space and maximize the value for those tenants, essentially. So it might be that we have a florist, baker and a kind of standard food and beverage offer. But again, that wasn't just a sort of a whimsical decision to make. It was all around how we open up the site to the people who already know it really well. And then, actually, when you get those sorts of offers in place, I spend a lot of time there, working, just sitting in spaces, seeing it. You get a lot of informal moments with your future neighbours, and those informal conversations help us then tailor things that are happening. So, although we have a projected vision of what this early activation is going to be, the idea is that we're fluid enough to change it at a moment's notice, and we want to hopefully embed those things in the longer-term development. 

 

Now, you have a background particularly at Bow Arts Trust, so I'm presuming you have a belief that arts and culture should be embedded early into similar kinds of projects. Are you working on something at London Cancer Hub or elsewhere that exemplifies that?

 

So yes, London Cancer Hub again. I'm going to refer to it again, because it's such a big project. At London Cancer Hub, the day I arrived, one of the things I wanted to do was: how do we open up the public realm? So, we've installed a community garden. We've now installed a sculpture that was part of the London Festival of Architecture, and we have plans to embed a proper cultural strategy that's not one that is about dropping things in for the sake of it. Again, it's back to my earlier point, but I think embedding culture early and doing it in a meaningful way where you engage people along the journey can leave a lasting footprint on what the future looks like. Culture doesn't exist on its own. I think it needs the other things I've referenced. It needs the food; it needs the sports offer. It needs things that can drag people out there. But by opening up a concise cultural strategy, you engage a far wider spectrum of people, and along the way, what we'd like to do is provide opportunity through that. So, art and culture are a great way of engaging with different members of society, such as school groups coming and doing a visit and looking at the world differently. Can we get an artist down there so the artists who deliver the sculpture, they're going to do a planting workshop and also talk about the principles of their design? It’s a way of engaging with people in a far more human-centric way. And I think if you embed that as part of your journey throughout, you get a far better sense of engagement and a belonging of place throughout your journey. So yeah, I think the embedding of culture is massively important at Edward Street Quarter that you mentioned. I've been working to try and secure some space for an artist gallery and affordable workspace within that, working with organizations that I know from my time in Bow Arts. But again, that's about providing genuinely affordable opportunity for creatives in the city to show, to make, and then hopefully that leaves its footprint on the site and there's more opportunity to develop with us throughout the journey of the development. 

 

How do you measure, if you like, that all of this works, aside from fast leasing, footfall and so on? Are there measurement indicators that you use for this? 

 

We would assess our success at varying stages. You mentioned early leasing. I think for us, getting our early activation and embedding our place management strategy earlier obviously supports with that. I think there's also people satisfaction. We do a lot of work engaging with residents and occupiers of our space at Edward Street Quarter - Octopus Energy have taken about 80,000 square feet. They're a huge occupier in that building, and actually, we spend a lot of time asking them: “what would make the place better?” As a result of that, we started doing monthly markets in the public square. It seemed like a fairly straightforward, easy thing to do, but actually, just having a conversation with their staff, going into their office and chatting to people about what they would like, those are kind of soft metrics to check it, but actually it's a way of us engaging with occupiers and visitors. So, I think that that's an important way of doing it. In the longer term, and what I think is really important, often I see us as almost custodians of these spaces. The decisions we make today will impact what the place looks like in 10 years. Success to me looks like: if I have a small food and beverage offer at London Cancer Hub, and it starts small and it's a local business, if I go back to that site in 10 years’ time, I'd like to see them running the restaurant. I think I'd like to see those smaller initiatives that we start day one growing with us and the scheme, because that will then develop that place character. Successful schemes I've worked on in the past always have that element to it, where, when you visit the place, it feels like there's been a journey and growth within it. And often you'll see those businesses thriving - if we can support them with early activation and sensible place management that's built around making the buildings really efficient, really welcoming, green and sustainable. If we can provide that sort of base level for people, then when you visit the space in two, five, 10, years, you feel the place has grown with it, and often the footfall will too, as a result of that. You'll see the improvements from it. You'll see the environmental scores go through the roof because people understand how to use the green tech that we put in. We haven't just put it in and walked away. We've actually spent time learning it with the occupiers, teaching them how to do it, making sure it's fit for purpose. And so those sorts of metrics are really good to view. Edward Street Quarter has an incredible energy performance as a result of that sort of approach. 

 

Excellent. Well, we're just about up to time. So, thank you very much for explaining all of that, and I look forward to visiting London Cancer Hub at some stage to see how it's all going. Maybe have a game of Padel. My new hobby!

 

(laughs) I'm really terrible at it, so I don't that's not going to be good for me. Maybe I'll spend loads of time practicing when I'm there.

 

Okay, well, we'll have a game. 

 

All right, nice to talk. 

 

Thanks, Joss. Bye