Season 2: Episode 4 - Health on the High Street with Rumi Bose Artwork

Collectively Speaking

A new podcast series, looking at the big issues in the built environment, hosted by industry expert and LDN Collective Founder Max Farrell.

The LDN Collective is a network of built environment experts and creatives fighting to improve people’s lives and the planet’s prospects.

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Collectively Speaking

Season 2: Episode 4 - Health on the High Street with Rumi Bose

November 04, 2024 • Max Farrell • Season 2 • Episode 4

In the latest episode of our Collectively Speaking podcast series, we hear from urban regeneration expert Rumi Bose about health and wellbeing in our high streets and town centres.

An award-winning place-shaping expert, Rumi’s high street and regeneration projects have won New London Architecture, Civic Trust and RIBA awards. She is Chair of the NLA’s High Street Expert Panel, board member of Future of London, and a member of the Property X-Change Sounding Board.

This podcast is a treasure trove of wisdom and experience!

Find out more about the LDN Collective at
https://ldn-collective.com/

2:01:59

Thank you very much,Max. Thank you forhaving me.So tell us yourbackground is a reallyinteresting one, thejourney you've beenon. Can you tell us abit more about yourexperience working?Was it Southwark andthen another localauthoritybefore the GLA?Yes. So I am an urbandesigner bybackground.That's my training.And once I graduated,I moved to Southwarkto live and alsostarted working forthe local council.So that's where mysort of city urbanismjourney began atSouthwark, starting inthe planning policyteam and stayed therefor four years, whichwas reallyinteresting, sort ofwriting and developingurban policies fromdensity policies totall buildings andviews, conservationdesign heritage,and really learningabout how planmaking happens.After four years, Imoved into anotherteam, which was aboutcapital projectdelivery, so usingsection 106 funds todeliver public roundprojects and reallycompletely fell inlove with that.really from inceptionto completion, workingon the ground, havinga site, a budget,writing a brief thatwould achieve theright kind of outcomesthat thecouncil wanted,selecting the rightteams, and thenworking collectivelya number of differentexperts to delivergood places.(...) So Idid that for anumber of yearsdelivered small sites,larger sites,meanwhile, youthsites, cultural ledprograms, landscape,high street,all sorts really.So I had a fantastictime and ended upbeing at Southwark for14 years. So it was areally good place forme to sort of learn mycraft and work withlike-minded people.Very much the theme atSouthwark waspartnership working,so collaboration,working not justwithin the council,but within theecosystem more widely.So with bids, withfunding bodies, withGLA, with markets, allsorts ofdifferent people.So that was afantastic sort ofstart to my career,after which I moved tothe GLA, as you said,to the mayor's office,and worked in theregeneration team,And I had there, asyou'd expect, aslightly differentrole being at the GLA,not so much deliveryon the ground, butmore sort ofstrategic.So advising boroughscommunity partners ontheir regenerationprograms and projects.I was principal on theNorthwest team, so Iwas responsible forNorthwest Londonboroughs. So myboroughs were Ealing,(...) Kensington andChelsea, Westminster,(...) Brent,and the OPDC patch aswell. So really greatmix, again,of boroughs.My work wasvaried, sort ofprojects that neededme to jump in and sortof be back on theground again, helpingsomeone write a brief,brokeringpartnerships.(...) Butthen other partnersmight not need thatlevel of help, so Icould be quitestrategic and justcheck in. So it wasanother sortof really good,role for me.And after that,decided to sort ofbranch out on my ownand see if I could doa similar sort ofthing for myself.So that's what I didat the end of 2022. Isort of left the GLAand kind of had a footin both. So I didn'twant to leave publicsector entirely, so Idid some workthe Royal Borough ofGreenwich, deliveringagain sort of publicground projects andwas developing my ownbusiness atthe same time.us a bit more about,so now you're inconsultancy and youmentioned you workwith public sectorclients still, butyou're working alsowith privatesector clients?I am,yes. Yeah.Tell us a bit moreabout what the kind ofthings you're up to atthe moment.So what have Ibeen doing? Sothe end of last year,I did a piece of workfor Brent Council,which was for NiesdenTown Centre. And thatwas a sort ofstrategic vision withdesign proposals. Andall of that wasunderpinned by aseries of communityengagement andco-design. So that wasreally good, workingwith architect SanchezBenton and conceptculture from a placeidentity point ofview.(...) What elsehave I been doing?I've been doing somesocial impact advisorywork for developers.One a very largedeveloper,working with OakGarden Partners as anassociate and workingto try and understandthe area from a verygranular point ofview, talking to localpeople, talking to theyoung people, findingout where the arts andcultural networks are,finding out what worksreally well, whatdoesn't work reallywell, and how a brandnew development mightknit in authenticallyinto that place byunderstanding theplace first.So I think that havinga public sectorbackground where yourshareholders are thecommunity,your work is alwaysfor the communities.You're working fordemocratically electedmembers who servethose wards.Social impact has beenwhat public sector hasbeen doing forever.So in more recenttimes in the lastdecade or so wheresocial impact hasbecome much more of anoutput for everybodyor a sort ofaspiration foreveryone, I think mybackground in localauthorities reallyserved me well to sortof understandto go abouthow to do that.been doing quite a bitof stakeholderengagement as well.I'm doing a piece ofwork for Hackney.(...)I've just come backfrom India, fromMumbai and Chennaiworking for amanufacturing facilitythere.(...) And that'sreally interesting.It's an industrialbuilding. They want toreimagine theirfactory, but they wantit to be sort ofrooted in the placeand its people. So Iwas out there sort ofdoing that stakeholderengagement.So, so, Rumi, you'reclearly a sort ofmulti-talented person.You've talked alreadyabout some of yourwork advising onstrategy and fundingfor projects, youknow, ranging fromsort of the urbanscale, like Neasden,to more specific, youknow, more specificlike the one we wentto see yesterday inPevrel Gardens, whichwas a reallyinteresting retrofitof previous sort ofcar park and garagesinto sort of artiststudios and a newgreen space.(...) Idefinitely would liketo hear more aboutthat. But you've alsojust mentioned about aproject in India. AndI think from what Ican gather, that'smore about sort ofstakeholderengagement. But it'sfor a manufacturingcompany. I think theymake tires, or one ofthe big tiremanufacturers. Tell usa bit more about that.That's right. So, thecompany are sort ofone of the top tiremanufacturers inIndia. So, theyproduce a huge numberof tires. They have anumber of factoriesacross India,with one particularfactory being theirflagship factory insouthern India, inChennai, or justoutside of Chennai.So, we, the projectteam, were asked to goout to Chennai,(...)understand thebusiness a bit more,with the idea ofproducing a masterplan and a vision for a new company.And a sort ofreimagined campus.So, my role, my remitthere, was to informthe master plan, or isto inform the masterplan with a set ofstakeholder engagementworkshops.So, we had a reallygreat time there. Wesort of did a bit ofcultural immersion,(...) really trying tounderstand the place,(...) itshistory, its heritage,its kind of role inthe region. And foundout some fascinatingthings about historicarchitecture, thetemples, there arebeautiful 7th centurytemples that you canfind there. It's alsoa place that'ssynonymous withtraditional silkweaving of saris andother garments.And dance, aparticular Indiandance calledBharathanatyam has itsseat in this region aswell. And of course,we had lots ofdelicious food. So, wehad a great time sortof really trying tounderstand the area.But then we weretalking to theemployees as well,trying to understandtheir business, tryingto understand whatthis place means forthem, what the companymeans for them in acorporate way, butalso in a sort ofpersonal identity way.then visited some ofthe local towns andvillages to see someof the outreach workthat this bigmanufacturing companydoes. It's reallyimpressive, the kindof work that they doin terms of women'sempowerment,sanitation,street lighting,so really sort ofsocial impact at itsbest really. So,was great to be ableto sort of collect allthis material andresearch and discoverwhat was going on, andthen feed that backinto a sort of placenarrative, which willthen go on to form the master plan and vision.Well, that sounds likea fantastic project.And yeah, I'm reallylooking forward toseeing how thatdevelops and what themaster planlooks like.bit closer to home,you mentioned thatyou've been working onhigh streets a lot.think it was itNunhead in Southwark,where it's seen as avery successfulexample ofregenerating a highstreet, partly becausethe council owned oneof the shops, whichthey then were able tocurate and allow sortof local businesses tocome and use it in amoreentrepreneurial way.Is that a sort of atemplate or a goodcase study that otherscould learn from, doyou think?I think so. And Ithink actually what'skey or what's reallyhelpful here isownership.With ownership comescontrol. And so thenyou can sort of curateand change and do whatyou need to do or wantto do with aparticular place orunit in this case.Yeah, I mean, NunheadVillage was a programthat was delivered 10years ago now. And itwas part of the OuterLondon fundingfrom the GLA.So when I was workingat Southwark, I wassort of working onthat.(...) And yetstill I live quitelocally. So I see it'sstill a reallysuccessful place andsuccessful in terms ofits its active, itsvibrant, its pleasant.The shops are nice.What was once quite apoor, unloved kind ofgreen space is nowthriving. It has alovely playground.It's a nice place togo and relax. There'sa great communitycenter, which was partof the project aswell, which has allsorts of classes andactivities.It's quite atraditional centerwith Victorian housesand a couple of pubsand sort of Victorianshop fronts. And so,yeah, it had a numberof strands to it. Ithad a sort of shopfront strand, which weworked on withYankatine Architects.The design of thegreen and thecommunity center andsome new housing wasAOC Architects.And what reallybrought it to life wasthe sort of socialaspect, which was afunded program offestivals and this popup shop that you mentioned.The pop up shop wascouncil owned and wehad a sort of rollinglease of six or sevenweeks where localfledgling businessescould come in, run abusiness for sixweeks, have a streetparty, celebrate, andthen the next one camein. And so we did thatfor, I think it wastwo years. So therewas quite a demand forit.(...) And what itcreated was thisreally nice sort ofdynamic activation ofthe space that changedevery six weeks andgave an opportunity tolocal businesses tocome and try and failsafely if they had tobecause the rent wewere able to controlas a council, itwasn't huge rents andbig business rates. Itwas very low rent.So that was reallyenabling. And what wasnice about it was thatthree of thebusinesses at the endof the program went onto establishthemselves permanentlyto on that high streetand one not so faraway. So that's beenlovely. And it's nowit's now no longer apop up shop. It's nowsort of apermanent business.So it played a role inregeneration.It did. It's acatalyst. Absolutely.The festivals were agreat sort of catalystas well. It was quitea burgeoning artisticcommunity in andaround Nunhead. Sothere was all sorts ofactivities,art trails,street theater,(...)food and drinkfestivals,jumble sales.August to December fortwo years. And again,just bringing peopleout and bringing localpurveyors of culture,them a space. It'svery nice. So it'sstill quite an oldproject, but stillvery relevant.just thinking aboutthe topic of thispodcast,(...) Healthon the High Street,it'd be good to knowfrom you why is thatimportant? And what isthe opportunity? Butalso, how can wethese things happena way that's moremeaningful and happensmore quickly?I thinkagility.When we're talkingabout organizationslike the NHS or publicsector organizations,they're not synonymouswith being agile andnimble. But we needfocus on delivery. Weneed to translate thenarrative into gettingthings done. So Ithink it's aboutkeeping things simple,absolutelycollaboration,and just doing itlearn frommistakes on the way.I thinkthinking beyondhealth centers-- yes,absolutely, healthcenters anddiagnostics-- somegreat examples at themall shopping centerin Wood Green, wherethey've got one of thetrial communitydiagnostic centershappening.Also, Oru Space inSutton, if you haven'tvisited that, go andhave a look at howthey've re-imagined avacant departmentstore and createdco-working, yoga,(...)social outreach,chatty cafes, allsorts of reallyinteresting healthrelated activity.Co-location, I think,is really key as well.(...) It's happeningalready. It needs tohappen on highstreets. But why notget your carrots, yourcoffee, your CAT scan,and your cleaning allin one go?So yeah.years ago, when youwere doing Nunhead, Iwas working on areview for thegovernment ofarchitecture policy,the Farrell Review.And one of ourrecommendations thatreally took off wasaround every town andcity having an urbanroom, somewhere whereyou can go and you canunderstand the past,present and future ofthat place. And it'san independent placeand it's somewherewhere you can havedebates or use fordifferent communityevents and schools andso on.(...) And therewas obviously, likeyou said, withNunhead, it's aboutproving the needbecause once you kindof take that step andyou do take a riskand, you know, it'sgreat to hear localauthorities being thatsort of bold andvisionaryabout these things.But what really struckme at this HealthyCity Design Conferencewas this idea it's inLiverpool, in one ofthe districts withinwider Liverpool, wherethey've created, theycalled it a life roomand it's somewherethat does have mentalhealth professionalsthere on a regularbasis. But the NHSGP'swill prescribe peopleto go to and they cango there and they canhave some, it's notabout medication orcuring a problem, it'sabout prevention andit's about this ideaof social prescribing.And I thought that wasreally interesting tothink about, first ofall, and today weheard from RachelReeves in the budgetthat there's going tobe a lot more fundinggoing into preventionand creating healthrather than curingpeople once they'realready sick. Andthat, to me, is aboutpeople gettinghealthier in theirhome or in the highstreet.(...) So justthinking about thatmodel where, you know,you had that emptyshop in Nunhead andyou used it forentrepreneurs orartists. What do youthink are the sort ofopportunities orbarriers andchallenges arounddoing somethingsimilar but forimproving people'shealth and engagingthem with more healthyeducation andlifestyles?I think that's areally good question,so topical and onethat I think we'rethinking about so muchas high street, youknow, experts.I'm actually the chairof the NLA High Streetpanel and we thinkabout this all thetime and I think oneof the opportunitiesbroadly on the highstreet is to co-locatedifferent activitiestogether that perhapsweren't alwaystraditionally on thehigh street orco-locate moreactivitieswithin one building.Hybridization ofspace, if you like.I think in terms ofgeneratingopportunities forhealthcare, there's somuch there. I mean, itdoesn't... A, we knownow or have known fora long time that theNHS is struggling.There are services,particularly acuteservices, that need tostay within hospitals,(...) but there areother less acuteservices that don'tnecessarily need tostay within sort ofthat campus or NHSbuildings.Those sorts ofservices could belocated in a highstreet environmentwhere there's lots ofother uses andactivities that peopletravel to high streetsfor. In terms ofactive travel, highstreets are usuallylocated nearand train stations.yeah, sort of directhealthcare uses couldbe located to acertain extent on highstreets and that's anopportunity. I thinkthere's also the lesssort of direct healthsort of benefits,things like issuesrather like socialisolation,(...) likefood poverty,like art and creativeand cultural uses. Allof these things couldbe thought about assort of the widerhealth of society, thewider sort of healthyhigh streets orhealthy places.You mentioned beforeabout a project wherepeople who are notwell off, who mightnot have asreadily accessto fairly basicthings, whether it'sfood but also washingclothes and theknock-oneffects of that.Could you just tell usa bit moreabout that? Yes,two actually,One of them isamazing project calledNourish Hub, which Ihad the very goodfortune of comingacross and working ona little bit at theGLA. I can't take fullcredit for the workbecause there areotheroffices involved,strongly urge anyoneto go and visit. It'ssmall sort of paradeof five shops, Ibelieve, that againwere owned byHammersmith and FulhamCouncil, that wereknocked through tocreate this communitykitchen in partnershipwith UK Harvest. Sovery much addressingissues of food povertyand social isolation.This parade of shopsis right in front of asocial housing estate.model here is a bigindustrial kitchenwhere good food iscooked and servedevery day, and anybodycan go in and enjoy alovely bowl of soup orrisotto or a lovelyplate of food for asmuch as they can pay.If they can't pay,they don't pay, andyou pay asmuch as you want.It's a beautiful spacedesigned by RCKArchitects. It wasdone very much inconjunction with thecommunity.As well as theindustrial kitchen,there's a sort of showkitchen, a kind oftraining kitchen,which is used byschools and othergroups to go and cooktogether. But it'sfantastic. It's such alovely project. Andagain, just using highstreet units,reimagining them,addressing these kindof key social issuesthat we're facing. Sothat's brilliant.I didn't realise itwas RCK, our LDNCollective Architectswithin our membership.Yes, really nice one.All the more reason togo and see it.Absolutely.And the second one I'dlike to talkabout is...Not so much of oneproject, but I havebeen working, as Isaid, on some socialimpact advisory workfor a local authorityin South London. AndI've been talking toNHS groups and othercommunity groups whoare trying to do areally good job totackle similar issues,so food poverty andissues around living conditions.Lots of people don'thave access to washingand drying facilities.They have small, damp,cramped conditions andcan't wash and drytheir clothes. Such abasic need.And there's somereally sad storiesabout children ofthese families beingbullied at schoolbecause their clothessmell and all of thatkind of thing. So I'vebeen talking to peoplethere about trying tofind space inthe town centreto create, again, anaccessible,(...)welcoming environmentthat's not taboo,(...)that's pleasant forpeople to go andaccess food, fridges,cooking space,safefor children to play,washing and dryingfacilities.Basic food like pastaand vegetables andrecipes as well. Sothat whole foodeducation, foodpoverty, socialisolation,access to clean, dryenvironments, all onthe high street in apleasant environmentis just another reallyworthy and needed use,I think, forhigh street.I mean, they soundlike fantasticprojects.(...) It'sreally interesting howpeople are much moremindful of how we canstart to proactivelycreate these types ofspaces(...) incollaboration betweenthe private sector,the public sector, andwhat difference theycan make to thecommunities. So Ithink just to sort offinish off, we've gotan event coming up on,it's the second eventthat we've had aroundcommunity engagement,co-design, socialvalue, and I know thatyou came to the firstone as an invitedguest and now you'regoing to it, the nextone is one of our partof the team, which isfantastic. And I thinkwhat you do willreally add a lot ofvalue to the sort ofcollaboration thatexists between peoplelike ECF that do thatsort of on the groundsort of communityengagement andcommonplace that havethe digital platformand the Quality ofLife Foundation andothers. But this eventis focusing on sort ofthe role of technologyand innovation inengagement and howit's improving theprocess and sort ofminimizing the sort ofdemand for customresources a lot of thetime on localauthorities. And Iknow you've got someexperience at that. Ithink you mentionedabout, I think it wasNeiston where you hadsome experience ofusing more digitalprocesses that reallyhelp make things morestreamlined and have awider reach, is thatfair to say?Yeah, definitely. Ithink in Neiston, thework that we weredoing, as I wassaying, it was writinga strategy and anaction plan,a series of sort ofphased proposals, butthey had to beinformed by thecommunity, bystakeholderengagement. So I thinkin the face ofshrinking budgets,we all have to thinkabout ways in which wecan use thoseresources more andmore efficiently.When we were doing ourwork at Neiston, wetrialled, we had a goat doing more digitalengagement,as you say, to createthat wider reach,which was actuallyreally successful.We were able to reachmore people than wewould have otherwisewith the resourcesthat we had.And then equally atthe back end, justanalyzing theresponses that we gotfrom engagement, usingAI to sort of extractthat narrative and thekey sort of points wasto be useful. So I'mby no means an expertin that field, but itwas great to sort ofsee the power of itand yeah, I'm surehopefully that theevent will hear morefrom others.Definitely in ourfield, I think it'ssomething that we needto sort of learn aboutand explore morecollectively.Good stuff. And ifanyone's listening andthey're listeningbefore the 19th ofNovember, then verywelcome to come along.It's at the CoventGarden CommunityCentre, 2 to 5 pm, andcome andmeet myself andSo Rumi, there's agreat book that Ibecame aware ofrecently by LordCrisp, who was thehead of the NHS. It'scalled Health Is Madeat Home, Hospitals arefor Repairs.And this topic thatwe're talking abouttoday, health on thehigh street, is almostlike the middleground. But it's verymuch around peoplebeing able to livemore locally and alsohave more educationand access to healthcare near them in ahigh street ora town center.Can you tell us a bitmore about how thatmight work in realityand why that'simportant to do?Yes, absolutely.So I think, as weknow, the health caresystem has beenfailing for a longtime. It's on itsknees. In thiscountry, they do anamazing jobwith less and lessresource. I heardrecently that the NHSmaintain somethinglike 18,000 buildings,which cost them 11billion pounds a yearto maintain.Obviously, there's aneed for acuteservices to stay wherethey are. But I thinkthere's a realopportunity to movesome of those lessacute services, takethe load away from theNHS,(...) and locatethem into those morecentrally, locallyaccessible places,like high streets andtown centers, whichare almost alwayslocated near publictransport.(...) Peopleare going to highstreets anyway.But at the same time,it addresses the direneed for high streetsto diversify and torevive. Retail hasbeen failing.And so why not try andlocate some of theservices where we canin innovative ways?And it's not justdirect health care.It's about socialisolation, wellness,and all sorts of useslike that. So yeah.

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