David Taylor 

Hi, Michelle. How are you? 

I'm really good, thanks. How are you doing? 

Very good, thank you. I wanted to ask you about the framework for inclusive growth that you've produced at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. But before I ask what its main aim is, can you describe what ‘inclusive growth’ means to you? 

Sure. I mean, a lot of people ask, and I think my definition probably changes a little bit every time. I'll just go back a step. 

When I started in this role, which was a very long time ago, we had been working as a collective with local partners around what the legacy of the 2012 Games could be. And there was a bid promise that stuck with me, which was about the communities that hosted those games would be the ones who benefit most from it.  That stuck with me, and I think that sits at the heart of this inclusive growth ambition, which is that people living in East London genuinely feel the benefit of the really significant growth that's happening here.  

That’s about how secure they feel in their livelihood. That's about access to good, stable work. It's about their access to quality public services and housing and amenity. And it's not just about saying 'this growth has happened, and therefore your life is better'. It's about people genuinely feeling that things have improved in their day-to-day. So, for me, that is inclusive growth – and also that people are part of our growth plans, in that we are co-designing with communities, rather than 'doing to' communities. So, it's about how people feel about the growth, but also how they're included in the growth process, if that makes sense. 

It does. How do you measure that as you go, in terms of how happy that they are that they are included? 

Well, we're really lucky, because we have UCL on the park. UCL host the UCL Institute of Global Prosperity, the IGP, led by a great person, Dr Saffron Woodcraft, and their work looks at a number of metrics that we are leaning on around using a citizen science model. So: local people, trained, paid London living wage, going out and asking other local residents, how they feel about the changes that have been happening. We've been working with them over a number of years; we've done a longitudinal study, a first phase of that for the first residents on the park, but it also obviously goes out into the neighbouring four boroughs so, you know, people in my hometown, Canning Town and other places, asking those questions about how people feel. 

So, we've got all of the measures you would expect about how many local people are employed on the park and all of those sorts of things. But there's also this citizen science-led survey work that happens each year that is asking people really how they feel. That's been a great thing that we've leaned into. But also, we've got our young people board, Elevate, who has been with us from the beginning. That's made up of young people across the four growth boroughs. And also, a newer thing for us, our community anchored network, the CAN, which has local community led groups across the park and within a one-mile radius of the park, who we regularly consult and engage with around some of these key opportunities and challenges. So: just constantly checking in, and not just a superficial level engagement, or consultation; rather, just proper co-design. “These are our plans, how does that feel to you?” “Are we on the right track?” “How can you make it better?” They've very much been at the heart of the co-design process for the framework as well. 

So, I think it's different things. It's having the robustness of something like UCL's prosperity index, and also that constant co-design and checking process with real people. And that's a really important, important part of the work that we do. 

So, the framework: what is its main aim? It has three interconnected ‘pillars’, doesn't it? Could you describe those, and its aim? 

Yes, sure. So, the pillars that we have are Habitat, which we describe as the enabler, and that's about the park as a physical place, the green and blue spaces, which are beautiful. It's about the anchors – assets and anchor institutions have made the park their home. We've got eight universities. We've got Here East and Plexal – a major employment business hub. We've got people living here. We've got three schools. We've got London's newest creative cluster, East Bank. So, you've got all of these wonderful buildings and partners that have assembled here, as well as the natural space. And we're thinking really seriously about how we make that habitat an asset that supports the inclusive growth agenda. How do people access East Bank? How do people engage with the park? How do we make that feel inclusive and welcoming, and not something that local residents feel that they can't come into and feel comfortable? So, you know, really trying to sweat those assets, I suppose, for the benefit of East Londoners. And that's why people are here. That's not a hard sell with our partners. Our partners have come with that legacy agenda in mind. 

It's also about how we build our neighbourhoods, how we build the inclusivity and these environmental features into our homes, etc. And then we've got loads of commercial space still to build: about 27,000 square metres at Pudding Mill Lane, our next development that we're in a JV with Vistry in. So, how do the businesses that we attract into that commercial space as part of our habitat or ecosystem support our inclusive growth ambitions around high quality jobs in key growth sectors, etc? 

So that's Habitat as the enabler, and then we've got Inclusive Talent, which is the engine. That's about recognising that East London is home to the youngest, most diverse, talented population. It's really building on a narrative that we've spent a lot of time trying to switch, which is that when I started regeneration in the early days, and as someone that comes from East London, the narrative was always about deprivation. It was always about what was missing from our area and our communities. And there was an ask of partners to help, almost in a charitable endeavour. That's really quite damaging over time, about how people feel about themselves and their places. And I think, for those of us that have been involved in regeneration for a long time, there was this whole period where deprivation solved. You know, the more deprived you made an area found, the more likely you were to win funding, but that doesn't help with how you feel about the place and yourself, and it doesn't help with the perceptions of people from outside and so, people: me and partners, colleagues, have spent a lot of time thinking about, how do we switch that narrative so that people see East London as a place that they might want to be part of a transformation of the place? And that's fine, but they're also coming here to be transformed themselves. 

So again, thinking about East Bank, these cultural institutions. They want diverse talent with new ideas, and they want new, diverse audiences, and East London is the place to come to achieve that. I always describe it as our programmes, and hopefully what we deliver for our framework can be life-changing for individuals and game-changing for institutions and sectors. This inclusive talent pillar builds on work we've done on our education, employment and skills programmes, where we've worked really hard with local people and businesses to understand opportunities and challenges and to get local residents into well paid jobs, but in doing so, improving the productivity of those businesses. So, it's reciprocal: it's a two-way street. And what we're trying to do in this inclusive talent pillar is to scale that activity, because as successful as it is, it's quite small scale, and we want to really take this to scale and make the things that we've tested and learnt here on the park, we want to make that travel beyond East London, across London, as part of the mayor's inclusive talent strategy. 

So that's the inclusive talent pillar. And then our last pillar is Health and Wellbeing. And if inclusive talent is the engine, habitat is the enabler, health and wellbeing we see as the foundation. Because ultimately, people need to be healthier. They need to have healthier lives, and they need to be in healthy places in order to enjoy all of the things that we're co-producing and developing as a partnership here. So, if people are not healthy, they can't get good work, etc. So, this idea that we exploit this park habitat and think about how we open it up to partners who are working in that health and wellbeing space to try and test out new approaches to prevention. Working with the health sector, University of East London, a valued partner, doing work in the neighbourhood health space, and thinking about how we play our part in that. That might be about linking into some of our tech businesses at Here East and Plexal, thinking about health innovation. It might be about our universities – UCL and others who are doing world-class research and development into health as a subject, and then also thinking about the creative sector, and how arts and culture play a part in people's health and wellbeing, and particularly mental health. 

So, I think we just, you know, for all of the work in the framework, it's about thinking about what we've built here together as a partnership and with local people, and some of the principles, not just physical build, but this is a place that celebrates good work. It's a London Living Wage Zone. And how we co-design with people and not do stuff to them – it's not extractive, as I say. It’s a genuine partnership endeavour, and how we now use all of that and what we've built here together to support this inclusive growth agenda and to really activate and optimise what we have at the park. 

I suppose the framework just gives us a single narrative that people can see themselves in and understand how they can contribute to play their part in that agenda. Because we've had the legacy promise, and I think that's really helped us and kept all of us focused on delivering against the legacy promise. But I think this framework and that single story around how we help to transform ourselves as institutions and transform the lives of these Londoners I think gives us a story for the next five to 10 years. And that's really what the framework is about. 

If I could turn the clock back to pre-2012, and pre- the development of this whole area, and then switch it back to the present, is it broadly what you personally expected as an emerging place, or has it exceeded that? 

That's a hard question. I've got so many thoughts on that. I think of myself growing up in Canning Town. My dad worked in the docks, the Royal docks, and to me, that was a really vibrant, strong community. We had challenges. But people were working and we felt connected. And I always felt really frustrated when I first started working in regen in East London, because we always started with the blight, the bit after the docks closed, and the stuff that had gone wrong. And I thought, for people who've grown up here, that's not our starting point. Our starting point is really strong community and people who looked out for each other, and really strong social values. And so, I suppose it depends on your starting point. 

In a way, I still feel like we've got a job to do about making sure that those connections are there and they're strong, and that they're real, and that the park doesn't feel like a place that's for some people and not for everyone. I think that we've made really good inroads in that. The buildings at East Bank are really porous places and people are encouraged to come in. The schools that we built, we purposely built early, before the new houses were built on the park, and we put them towards the edge of the park so that existing communities would come in, and they would be places of exchange between new and old, existing and new communities. So, I think there are things and moments where I think, look, we've done this really good starting point. 

I think back to my time when I started working in regeneration in Newham on employment and skills. The biggest employment opportunities I got to work on at that time was getting people into a new supermarket that might open, and now suddenly I'm talking about tech businesses and the BBC and the V&A and Sadlers Wells, as well as UCL! I could never imagine that that was going to be something that was here in East London. When I was growing up, I think there was a pressure: to move up, you had to move out. And I feel now that if you're a kid growing up here now, everything is on your doorstep. It's of such quality that you expect that quality in everything you do. It's not a school trip once a year; it's here. You see it, you live it. And so therefore I hope that that just raises the bar: that people, if you see it and believe it, and you think that that's what you deserve, then I think that that is just a really special thing. 

So: of course there's more work to do. We will go out and speak to people and they will say, I haven't felt the benefit of any of this change. I don't underestimate the challenge that remains. But no, I couldn't have dreamt it would look quite like this. And I just remain really hopeful that we've got the right partners, the right attitude, a shared, common purpose that we will really deliver some absolutely fantastic stuff for a generation. 

As a subsidiary question to that, I'm struck by a quote from your boss, Shazia Hussain, where she says 'the Queen Elizabeth Park is no longer just a location…’ so it's the difference between a location and a place. Do you do share that sentiment, and if so, when did it start acquiring its ‘placeness’, if you like? 

Well, that's a tough one. The test for me, when I think about it, is that it is a feeling, isn't it? And for me, it's always about, does this feel authentically and unashamedly, East London? And for me, it's starting to have that feel. 

How? Point to how. 

Well, I'll give you a really small, but for me, really significant example. When you walk across the bridge, with Westfield behind you, and you've got the stadium in front of you, and you've got the London Aquatics to the left of you, and you've got everyday school kids, local school kids, going in with their little swimming bags, and they're doing their daily or weekly school swim or whatever, that just feels to me like that's part of someone's day, and they're going back to their local school. And then you look to the right, and you've got Sadler's Wells with their big sign, 'you're welcome'. And then beyond the sign, right in the shop window of Sadler's Wells, so to speak, you've got a community dance floor. And every day there are people of all ages, different mixes of diversity – just truly East London – in that window, just having a dance. And then you've got West Ham fans at the weekend. For me, that starts to feel like a place that has something for everyone. And people are feeling comfortable, and it doesn't jar with me. It doesn't feel like, 'Oh, I've reached somewhere different that is slightly outside of East London, or it's a sanitised version of… or is a caricature. I see people that I recognise as being East Londoners, and I hear voices that remind me, are familiar, that this is East London, and that's about a feeling. 

That, I think takes it beyond being a place where you have a single experience with a particular venue. People are living here. People every day, young people, are going to school at Bobby Moore or the Mossbourne Academy. And for me, there's definitely been a transition. We used to do this event, 'the great get together', and once a year, it was an open invite to all local people, and it was a great event. I used to bring my mum, and she'd say, “oh, this really feels like East London here today”, but it was just a moment on a calendar in a year. And now I just think, every day, we have more and more of those moments. And that, for me, is the transition. 

That's a really great answer! Can we push the clock forward then as well, and for you to look into your crystal ball for 10 years hence and describe a) what you hope the place, the emerging place, will become and b) what you expect it to become. If they're two different things? 

Yes, I hope they're the same thing, but I think it's more of the same, you know?  There are two things. when I was growing up, I didn't feel like I was part of London. You'd use the expression going into London. 

From Canning Town? 

Yes. It was in the days before the Jubilee line. We had no real direct connection to anywhere. We are one of the most connected places. So, I just wanted to feel like you're in a part of London. It's the best of London. And we've got the best of London here on the park. We've got really special communities. I want that to continue. There'll be more residents, because we'll have built more homes, and we'll have health centres and a library; we've got 1000s of students every day, and visitors. And I don't want – I just hope that that continues to feel like London – just that natural blend. I don't want it to feel like these are different users of the park that just look really distinct and not integrated. I just want that to feel like a really natural flow. I think we're getting there, and I think it will, because that's what partners want. And I think that's how partners are programming their buildings, etc, you know, the museums, the universities, the cultural spaces, etc, to make that happen. I think you have to be a bit intentional about that. It doesn't just happen. Just because you say your building is open to the public, it doesn't mean that people feel that it's for them, or they want to come in, or they want to stay and dwell. So, I think you just have to continue being intentional about that, but I think it will happen. And then, outside of what it feels like I in five to 10 years’ time, I want this place to be known as an international exemplar of how you really do inclusive growth, how you do it well, and you do it through a really respectful reciprocal relationship with local communities. 

And I just want to completely have, once and for all, buried the idea that people come in and do stuff to people who are in need, and that we have this ecosystem here where there is this reciprocal relationship, and everybody sees the benefit of working together, because these ideas that young people in East London have, you know, they're the ideas that are powering cultural, creative economies across the world. And, you know, the world is here. We have every corner of the globe represented in our 1.2 million people in the four growth boroughs. It's a really rich, diverse talent pool. I want to see that real flow of exchange, and that not just being about people involved, but people are getting the economic benefit of that ideas exchange and that value exchange. So yes, being known as the blueprint for how to do genuine inclusive growth, for me is the task, and I think the framework is the thing that hopefully helps us get there. 

So: last question. Presumably you are in favour of Olympic and other bids and projects and their powers for regeneration. Can you foresee London mounting a bid for something similar in the future? And if so, would you embrace that? And where would you think it might involve? 

Oh, gosh, that feels like a really big question. I mean, I feel like, if anyone would fit in for anything in you know, whether it's at the scale that previous Olympics have been, I don't know, but I think that the lesson that we've learned from the 2012 Games is that really the sport was fantastic, and everyone has their memory of it. But actually, you know, the plans were about, as I said at the beginning, that legacy promise about the communities who hosted the Games benefit most from it, and so that was always the key aim. Yes, we have the wonderful summer of sport, but the regeneration plans for East London, that focus on this place and what it deserved to become, needs to be at the heart of any bidding plan. Otherwise, it is just a great summer of sport, or whatever the event might be. And so, you know, I think having those plans in mind and then building a partnership from bottom up. I don't discount the national and regional government that's involved in all of that bidding process, certainly when I was at the LDA, and that was happening at the time. But it was local partners as well, local councils. It was local community groups who were thinking about what the Olympics at that time could mean for East London. And so, for me, anything, any mega event, for it to deliver the sort of legacy that we're delivering here, has to be rooted in a vision, and that has come from the people that are here, that have been here before and will be here afterwards. Otherwise, it just is a thing that comes in and goes on to the next town or city or country. 

Lovely! Thank you very much for your time. Congratulations on everything so far, and good luck for the rest of what is to come. 

Thank you! Take care. Bye!