New London Architecture

Five minutes with...Sally Lewis

Friday 20 August 2021

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David Taylor

Editor, NLQ and New London Weekly

David Taylor caught up with Sally Lewis, director of Stitch Architects as she prepared to launch the London Neighbourhood Scholarship for architecture students aimed at addressing the built environment’s poor record on diversity.

David Taylor  
Hello Sally. How are you? 
 
Sally Lewis  
Hi David. Very good. Unusual to be having a telephone conversation!
 
David Taylor  
I know. It's weird, isn't it? I quite enjoy it. Because Zoom is so awful…
 
Sally Lewis  
It's very tiring!
 
David Taylor  
So, how are you doing? And what are you up to? I hear you've got something in the fire for September called the London Neighborhood Scholarship Trust. Would you like to tell me a bit more about that?
 
Sally Lewis  
Well, long story; it all started last year in deepest, darkest 2020. My practice was working on a big bid, and we were looking at social value contributions and what we might be able to offer the local community. I thought to myself that it would be a good idea to do something really tangible. Something that, you know, you really have to put your money where your mouth is. So, I decided for Stitch to sponsor a scholarship, and we are in the process of doing that. But then I also thought, well, that's not really good enough, just to do one student. So, we spent the last six months setting up this charity called the London Neighborhood Scholarship, to enable the entire London built environment community to support people – local people that they happen to be working with in local communities – and to really focus on the young people through their interactions with schools and workshops and work experience and mentoring. And to really try and make a strong link between built environment professionals and developers, and those local people.
 
David Taylor  
I read the statistic that 88% of architects are white and 72% are men, which is pretty frightening. How do we figure – ‘we’ being the built environment – vis à vis other industry sectors? Are we especially bad?
 
Sally Lewis  
I can't say for sure how we perform in relation to other sectors. But it does seem particularly bad if you consider that we are in the business of shaping people's lives, and we have a really direct relationship with how people's homes and neighborhoods evolve. So, for all of the people who are designing places, or new places or regenerated communities, to not have any resemblance to the communities that they're working with, is not right. From a very practical, regeneration point of view – and my practice is very much based on housing and regeneration – it's glaringly obvious on a day-to-day basis, not just as a statistic: your team needs to resemble the people that you're working with.
 
David Taylor  
What do you think is the main barrier?
 
Sally Lewis  
What we try to tackle is financial barriers, and support. We are trying to tackle the fact that young people who are at school might not even know that this is an opportunity that they could explore. Tahat might be through lack of exposure, but probably lack of financial means. It's quite interesting, just talking to many people, how they might be able to get a student loan, and they might be able to get some kind of maintenance grants if they have financial needs, but to do a degree in architecture requires so much more. And we all know that going on trips and buying materials and all the things that you need – a lot of people that I've spoken to have had to get a second job, one or two jobs just to support themselves through the course. That's not fair, because they're really starting off at a not-level playing field. And, unfortunately, a lot of people who have that financial barrier come from a diverse background and they are the people that we want to support.
 
David Taylor  
So, what are you looking for in terms of help towards this charity from people that might be reading this?
 
Sally Lewis  
Well, funding is probably the most important starting point, because without funding we won't be able to engage with any students and award any scholarships. But going forward, we're hoping that the entire community will be able to be Ambassadors for us. That Ambassador role is very much about investment of time. So, most people work with schools and young people as part of their social value contributions and projects, and we would just like people to be spreading the word to students, letting them know about these opportunities. We hope to partner with programs like Accelerate and segue into what they're doing with schools and for them to then be able to say, ‘Well, there are opportunities for you to take this exposure to architecture education forward with the scholarship opportunity’.  

My vision is that, in time, we'll be offering 10s or 100s of scholarships every year, and that we become the go-to charity for everybody who's trying to get this done. I mean, a lot of people have said: ‘we really want to do this ourselves, but it's just we don't know how.’ And a lot of people, when they win projects, and professional teams are being told you need to support someone through university, and they just don't know where to start. So, it's almost like we could become a bit of an agency for anyone who's trying to deliver really good, local social value. And, as I say, be the go-to place to do that, specifically for London development.

The criteria for eligibility for the scholarship would be that the young person would have to live in London, and be able to prove that they've lived in London for three years, for example. They have to be offered a place at the London school of architecture. We are looking to build relationships with all the London schools of architecture - we already have a really good relationship with Central Saint Martin's. We've already selected the first London neighbourhood scholarship student which Stitch sponsored, and they'll be going to Central Saint Martin's. That process has been fantastic, because CSM have a great ethos and a very diverse cohort already. But we are hoping to build relationships with all the universities in London, all the schools of architecture. And so, they’ll be promoting it and the students will be looking to them to help them apply for these scholarships as well. The third major criterion is financial need. That's how we are going to be focusing the award.
 
David Taylor  
There are various tiers for people that want to support you, which you'll be giving more details about in September along with the name of the scholarship student, presumably?
 
Sally Lewis  
Yes. So, we are just waiting to find out if they have been offered a place. We went through a wonderful selection process and spoke to some great candidates. We were very happy. So, we then unanimously agreed on selecting this particular student. And I'm sure that there's no problem with them actually accepting the award. It depends on their A level results, and all of those things, but we know that it's going to change their life, because if they didn’t get the award, this person would have had to get a job to support themselves or their mother would have had to get a second job. And we know that it will just put them on a level playing field with other students, and they’ll be able to focus on getting good grades.
 
David Taylor  
Yeah, amazing!
 
Sally Lewis  
And in terms of how people can help, which was the other part of your question, we are looking at different tiers of help. Obviously, we would love people to come along and say: ‘We'll give you enough money to support a whole student through university, and that would cost £36,000, or £12,000 pounds a year’. We think, well, that's quite difficult to ask people to do that if they can't really attribute that to a specific project or neighborhood. So, we've introduced, through these early discussions that we've been having, a role for the Neighborhood Partner. And that really unlocks quite a few of the conversations we've been having, because people can actually say: I’ll support a student, and I'll make sure that they come from x borough, and I'll be able to have a relationship with that student and support them and mentor them as they go through. That takes quite a significant financial investment. Whereas other Partners know that if they give a certain amount of money per year, we'd be able to say that they're Partners and then there will be Friends, potentially, who would be able to just give anything that they want. Ambassadors, of course, are a really valuable cohort of people who will be giving their time.
 
David Taylor  
So, last question. Is there a goal in terms of numbers, or percentages? Those horrific percentages I mentioned earlier - do you have a goal to reduce that, or a goal in terms of numbers of scholarships? Or is it all on the back of a fag packet, as it were, at the moment?
 
Sally Lewis  
Well, I mean, my very first goal, as a very naive architect starting a charity, was: I just want to be able to say that we could do one every year, support one person every year through the charity. But I'm so thrilled at the response that I'm getting, that I’m now thinking that potentially it could just become the norm, every year, that there's at least maybe 10 students who will be supported and maybe more. That's the only way that you can actually change the lack of diversity from that level, building a strong cohort of diversity through university and then into the industry beyond.
 
David Taylor  
Well, good for you. Congratulations. It all looks fantastic, and we'll support it in any way we can. Thanks very much, Sally. 
 
Sally Lewis  
Thanks very much, David. Cheers. Bye!

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David Taylor

Editor, NLQ and New London Weekly


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