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Category: Interviews

  • Axel Scheffler: ‘Arts education in schools isn’t priority anymore’

    Axel Scheffler: ‘Arts education in schools isn’t priority anymore’

    The great illustrator talks to Iris Spark about his journey to success

    Fame has its peculiar pockets. The man I’m talking to could walk down any street unmolested and you wouldn’t recognise his voice, which comes in polite and clipped, but surprisingly thick, German. But his name is one of the most ubiquitous on the planet. You’d have to look to a certain former President, and his co-author Julia Donaldson to find someone with comparable name recognition. 

    At 63, Scheffler is best-known as the illustrator of The Gruffalo and its sequel The Gruffalo’s Child. The first alone has sold 13 million copies in 59 editions worldwide, and has been made into a film. It’s a favourite book of Michelle Obama – and just about every parent.

    Did his parents encourage him in his chosen career? At first, there was friction. “They weren’t artistic,” he explains. “My father was a businessman and my mother was a housewife. So yes, my father considered me a hopeless case when it came to anything to do with numbers and business. But they were fine in the end.”

    Did they know before they died how successful he’d been? “They saw the beginning of it, yes. The Gruffalo was beginning to be successful before they went.”

    Scheffler talks to me over Zoom from his studio in the house he shares with his wife and 13 year old daughter. I can see books ranged beyond him, and everything lit by an appealing skylight. 

    He looks the epitome of established success – and is. But Scheffler had to find his own way, independently from what his family expected of him. “I always liked drawing,” he recalls. “I could see I had friends who liked my drawings and made them smile – but it took me a while to see that this was my profession. At arts college I found that illustration was what I could do; I knew that by my late twenties.”

    What distinguishes Scheffler is the memorability of his illustrations. The illustration of the Gruffalo itself is a magnificently weird creation, full of an outlandish comedy which is only hinted at in Donaldson’s poem. The books simply wouldn’t exist as they are without Scheffler’s ability to delineate absurdity. 

    And yet they’re also essentially inclusive, creating the illusion that anyone might have a go. That makes him a wonderful person to come into schools and give talks (“If someone says to draw a cow or a dolphin or whatever, I can do that, I’ve been doing this a long time!”) but there’s a quiet professionalism beneath the humour. 

    How long does it take him to do a double-page spread? “If everything goes well, I will do it in a day and a half or two days but normally I’m not happy! It might depend how much detail I have to do. If there’s a sky or not, or whether I’m using watercolours with colour pencils on top, but a double spread in two days is possible. I hope my publishers won’t read this!”

    For a moment, I’m in his world – briefly aware of the technical skill involved. Is he a great gallery-goer? “I’m sad that there were a few exhibitions I wanted to see when corona came. I wanted them extended but I don’t think there’s a direct link to me.”

    I ask if he sees positives in the NHS art in the windows now. He is immediately enthusiastic: “I think it’s lovely – especially the chalk drawings on the pavement round here in Richmond. It’s very touching, something which has been around for so long – chalk on a pavement or a wall. It’s very nice and retro.”

    There’s a generosity about Scheffler – a love of children. He continues, almost wistfully. “I don’t know whether there are numbers on whether Covid-19 has made children more creative but it would be a good thing if that was the case. Arts education in school isn’t priority in this country anymore, and it’s good if children can create.”

    Scheffler’s seems such a one-off career that it seems hard to imagine how it could ever be repeated. But does he have any advice for the younger generation? “I would say it’s not always the first choice you make which is the right thing for you. The situation has changed for young people compared to what people grew up with in the mid-80s. This concept of a job for life is under question, and in some ways it’s harder now to do what I did. But hopefully there will still be authors and will be illustrators. My advice is to be open and try.”

    Photo credit: Martin Kraft

  • Layla Moran on International Development: ‘It beggars belief that the government isn’t listening’

    Layla Moran on International Development: ‘It beggars belief that the government isn’t listening’

    Georgia Heneage

    When Boris Johnson decided to cut the Department for International Development (DfiD) in June of last year, his reasoning was, unsurprisingly, based on safeguarding British needs over others. He said that UK overseas aid “has been treated like a giant cashpoint in the sky, that arrives without any reference to UK interests”.

    Since Rishi Sunak’s heavy cuts to Yemen aid announced on Wednesday – a near 60% slash – the government’s insular approach towards international world affairs has once again been brought to the fore and prompted heavy criticism from ex PMs such as David Cameron.

    Neither instance of UK isolation are isolated events; they seem to be part of a wider pulling-back of responsibility from tackling the world’s issues. We saw this with the government’s cuts to foreign aid in January from 0.7% to 0.5%, and we’ve seen it with Brexit. On a philosophical plain, the right-wing, Britain-first rhetoric of Brexiteers seems to be in play here: that, over and above all else, our government should prioritise domestic needs over international ones.

    Layla Moran, Lib Dem Spokesman for Foreign Affairs and International Development, sees it differently. “Fundamental to Lib Dem values is that global problems need global solutions; just because someone else is somewhere else in the world doesn’t mean we don’t have a duty of care to them, especially if they are at risk of starvation,” she says. Moran sees the cut to Yemen aid as “an embarrassment” and hopes that the “sharp contrast between what we are doing and what the Americans are doing will serve to remind people of what Boris Johnson’s agenda actually is really about.”

    Moran says that the government’s approach towards international affairs has changed considerably since the time of the conservative coalition, when “there was a real sense at the time that all the parties were pulling together in the same direction”-which explains why three previous PMs have criticised Johnson for his approach to foreign aid. In its place, says Moran, has risen an “enlightened self-interest”, which stops the progression of economic migration and encourages others to bear the brunt of climate issues.

    “The Tories have reneged on their manifesto pledge. More importantly they’ve reneged on their promise to the world’s poorest, and I’m deeply concerned about the consequences of this,” Moran says.

    These narrowing interests have had a huge effect on the charity sector: according to NCVO’s UK Civil Society Almanac report in 2020, the proportion of charity income that comes from government was at its lowest point in a decade ahead of the coronavirus pandemic.

    The pandemic added fuel to the fire: a study last June showed that nearly half of UK charities for developing countries were set to close within 12 months following the first lockdown due to lack of financial support. The catch-22 has been that whilst 72% have seen increased demand due to the pressures of Covid on developing countries, 68% received absolutely no government funding at all.

    “We rely on Save the Children and other smaller charities for a lot of the work that we do,” says Moran. “They are now in a moment of crisis: the proportion of charities potentially going under is enormously high.

    “I’m seriously concerned about that: as soon as an organisation folds you lose that institutional knowledge. We really will struggle to get those links back up and reestablish the important role they play in both civil society in the UK and also abroad”.

    “That could be one of the unintended causalities of coronavirus. If smaller charities start to go under, then I think we’re in real trouble”. One answer, says Moran, may be to alter the charity model post-Covid. “It’s now time for charities to join their voices together; I think we need a coordinated response to raise public awareness”.

    As an MP of Palestinian descent- the very first, in fact- Moran says her background and life experiences have shaped her view of the part we must all play in helping those less lucky than us.

    “It does make you appreciate the world in a different way”, says Moran. “We were taught to appreciate everything we had- as a refugee, my mother had almost nothing growing up and she had to develop enormous resilience.” Moran still has family in Palestine who are living in segregated circumstances, and says it’s “heartbreaking” to hear the stories from back home.

    Her father’s job in the diplomatic service for the EU meant that Moran grew up living in war-torn countries like Ethiopia and Jordan. “Those very early memories were so important”, says Moran. “I remember when I was about five we were living in Ethiopia in the midst of its war with Eritrea. I was exposed to huge levels of poverty- literally on my doorstep- and constant military parades outside our house for months.

    “I remember asking my father why this was happening, and he explained to me that the dictator who ruled at the time wanted to exert his own power and chose to spend money on tanks over feeding starving people. It became a huge driving force on why I care so much about these issues.

    “You can talk about geopolitical shifts and you can speak philosophically and esoterically about world politics, but in the end it all comes down to real people. I keep those individuals in the front of my mind- that’s my motivation and everything else stems from there.”

    I point out to Moran that if an unintended causality of Covid-19 has been reduced attention to world issues, then a welcome one might be that it forces us recognise the importance of thinking laterally rather than locally. But she says the way the UK government has approached the vaccine roll-out has only served to highlight our innately “insular” nature: “We haven’t appreciated that no one is safe until everyone is safe. There are parts of the UK where 50% of people are vaccinated- which is an extraordinary achievement- but there are places in the world where not even a handful of health care workers have had the jab.

    “It’s important that we help to tackle the world’s problems together. It beggars belief that the government isn’t listening.”

  • ‘A terrible limbo’: the quagmire the music industry is in

    ‘A terrible limbo’: the quagmire the music industry is in

    Georgia Heneage

    With Rishi Sunak’s announcement of the Budget comes a beacon of hope for the struggling arts and culture sector. In what he calls “a historic package”, Sunak has pledged a £400 million bonus to help keep afloat gigs, theatres and galleries and his Covid Recovery Fund, which has so far supported over 3,000 organisations, will be increased to £1.87 billion.

    “This industry is a significant driver of economic activity, employing more than 700,000 people in jobs across the UK”, says Sunak. “I am committed to ensuring the arts are equipped to captivate audiences in the months and years to come.”

    The Chancellor’s words are music to sore ears; an industry which is financially reliant on live events, the music sector has been hard hit by the pandemic. The sector generates £5.2bn a year for the economy, £2.7bn in exports and sustains 210,000 jobs.

    But eight in every ten pounds of the average musician’s income comes from live performances; recording revenues have drastically dwindled in the digital age. Musicians receive next to nothing from Spotify plays, and live gigs and festivals have provided the backbone of their income over the past decade.

    Even before the pandemic, the industry was under close inspection by the government because of the poor financial model used by streaming services like Spotify. A poll by Musicians’ Union last year found that eight out of ten musicians (82%) earn less than £200 each year from online streaming: 92% said streaming made up less than 5% of their yearly salary and half that their income from recorded music had declined over the past decade. Sunak’s financial offering pales in comparison to the huge deficit which faces thousands of struggling musicians, venues and organisations.

    With such a small fraction of money made from streaming and a greater financial emphasis on live performance, it is no wonder that musicians have suffered over the past year. There’s a glint of hope for live performers in the rapid vaccine roll-out but it will take decades for the industry to recover from the covid shock. There’s been little to no activity in the music industry since the first lockdown in March, apart from a select few big names at well-established records labels, like Laura Marling or Dua Lipa.

    As usual, the hardest hit have been the least known. This has halted the emergence of new talent – the veins of the UKs globally-renowned music scene – many of whom are scouted in-person at gigs. In an NME interview, co-founder of indie label Speedy Wunderground said that “it’s a very difficult time to be a musician” because the pandemic has meant that there will be a backlog of talent “blocking the road”, and Brexit will likely impact touring Europe.

    With most live events set to reopen in May and return to full capacity in June, and given financial fuel by Sunak, the future is looking brighter for musicians. Like other art forms, could it have impacted the industry in a positive way? Has it been a catalyst for change?

    Booking Agent Phil Simpson had 200 shows cancelled in 2020

    For Phil Simpson, a Booking Agent who pre-pandemic coordinated the entire live careers for musicians – including booking tours and festival appearances – the pandemic has been “really difficult”.

    “With booking I’m always thinking 12 months ahead, and the way I make money is that I take a commission from what the band earns at a live event. So obviously if the gig doesn’t happen and the band doesn’t get paid, then I don’t get paid,” says Simpson.

    “That’s why this year has been so hard. I had almost 200 shows booked for 2020, and when everything first kicked off we moved the shows to autumn, which was a massive process. As things got worse we had to move them again and again. In some instances we moved shows 3 or 4 times.” Simpson says they’ve been stuck in a “terrible limbo” where old shows haven’t happened, but they’ve done all the work for them, and new shows haven’t been able to happen. Most venues don’t have availability until spring next year.

    Because he was seeing such a shortfall of income, Simpson decided to step away from his company and go back to being an independent agent. “We are seeing that a lot in the industry at the moment,” he says. “All the bigger companies are having to make redundancies and branch off into smaller outlets, just to keep overhead down and be agile.”

    The pandemic, and his frustration, shifted Simpson’s career in other ways: he wrote a book on his experiences being a Booking Agent, started mentoring and teaching music. “We’ve all been doing everything we can to diversify our work lives and keep the trickle of income coming in,” he says.

    Some of his friends in the wider business of professional music have had to go back into other employment and take on part time jobs. “Some”, says Simpson, “have even given up professional music altogether. I’m lucky that most of my clients are quite well established so that they can find other means to make money like selling CDs or merchandise”.

    The effect of the pandemic on musicians has not been exclusively financial. “Musicians are particularly susceptible to mental health issues,” Simpson tells me, “because the highs are high, and the lows are very low”.

    “It was a really worrying time”: over lockdown, Newcastle musician Anna Reay started doing door-step performances

    And the catch-22 is that the quagmire which the industry is in predominantly effects younger, lesser known artists who are just starting to emerge onto the scene: Simpson says that going forward, the event organisers will be looking for artists who will guarantee them tickets. The unwillingness to take risks will result in younger artists getting less of a chance than their older, better established peers.

    As one of those lesser known artists, the pandemic brought huge challenges for Anna Reay. A singer from Newcastle, before lockdown Reay sang at big weddings and corporate events, and had just got a big contract with a cruise liner.

    “It was a really worrying time”, she says. “Being a single parent my main income is music. The first couple of weeks were just horrific. I cried every day.”

    Once she decided to move back in with her parents and share the homeschooling load, things started to turn around for Reay. “Singing is like a kind of therapy for me, so I started to come up with new ideas just to keep me sane”.

    From this sprung an ingenious idea which became hugely popular and has kept her career going since: virtual singing Anagrams. Reay began recording a song every Thursday to coincide with the clap for carers: kids, adults, artists and businesses began sending in videos and photos every week which documented their lockdown activities, which Reay then turned into videos which she shared on social media. She soon got a following, and started to get requests to sing songs for birthdays, cancelled weddings, cancelled parties and postponed events.

    At the same time, Reay did doorstep performances – her mic powered by a car generator and with Covid-safety checks in place like ‘keep your distance signs’. For her first ever performance Reay sang for a family who’d just lost a young girl to a rare disease.

    “To be honest I’ve never been so busy. I’ve even managed to get a mortgage from it,” says Reay.

    “It all just fell into place for me, I think because I panicked and my creative survival kicked in. Every business has had to diversify. So I thought, ‘If they can do it, why can’t we?’”

    As Reay says, she’s been “lucky” that she’s been able to “pivot” her business and adapt to the pandemic. Others haven’t. “I’ve seen musicians that have decided to hang their microphones up. It really saddens me how much everything has changed.”

  • Laurence Fox on wokeism, education, and running to be London mayor

    Laurence Fox on wokeism, education, and running to be London mayor

    As part of our series focusing on candidates for the London mayoral elections, Emily Prescott speaks to the former actor about his ambitions to change education and jobs in London

    Laurence Fox hates confrontation. This may not be immediately obvious if you’ve seen the footage of the actor metamorphosing into a political brand on Question Time while accusing an audience member of racism after she called him a “white privileged male”. But he tells me although he is morally opposed to wearing “face nappies” to prevent the spread of coronavirus, he occasionally acquiesces — just to avoid arguments on the tube.  Besides, as he is getting a lot of attention for setting up his political party, Reclaim, and running for London mayor, masks make for a good disguise.

    When I walk into Reclaim’s office in London Victoria, Fox is finishing off his lunchtime plate of chips and his son is sitting at a laptop in the corner. Fox apologises, explaining his son isn’t allowed into school as he is supposed to be isolating. 

    Fox, 42, shares an office with one of the few right-wing comedians, Leo Kearse, who helps Reclaim with social media and Stephanie Kowalski, his executive assistant, who he met after she messaged Reclaim’s website. They seem to get on well with Fox, Steph’s only complaint is that he overshares and so people take advantage of him. They are part of a core team of three, which sometimes becomes twelve, making up his new Reclaim party. That’s excluding the people who have already been fired. 

    The internal recruitment hiccups seem unsurprising given the divisive nature of Fox’s work. His party has been characterised as ‘UKIP for culture’. Curiously, on the weekend that former UKIP leader Nigel Farage announced he was stepping back from politics, Fox announced he was stepping up and running for London Mayor. Fox doesn’t entirely reject their similarities but stresses that, unlike Farage he’s not focused on immigration. Fox, who voted for Jeremy Corbyn in 2017, says he would encourage a policy of “assimilation.” “I’m not like out on the Channel with a boat saying ‘go home’. Not my vibe,” he adds. 

    So, what is his vibe? He says he hates the lockdown rules as they stand in opposition to his love of freedom. “They’re ruling us and I don’t want to be f**king ruled,” he tells me like a rebellious adolescent. I start to think of him as the Right’s Russell Brand. The comedian who, while learning about politics in the glare of the public eye in 2015, briefly attempted to start a revolution by suggesting people shouldn’t vote.  But unlike Brand, Fox isn’t just words, he’s extremely proactive — and his message is clearly resonating. More than 30,000 people have already signed up to Reclaim and businessman Jeremy Hosking has donated £5million to the party and is bankrolling Fox’s run for mayor. 

    I wonder then, is he more akin to Boris Johnson who served as London mayor en route to Number 10? But aside from their well-to-do backgrounds and passionate patriotism, they have very little in common. Boris plays the class clown while trying to advance his own career, whereas Fox tries to be a serious politician, to the detriment of his (former) career.  Also, unlike Johnson, Fox doesn’t seem to care for an Oxbridge following. Fox doesn’t infuse sentences with classical allusions and he is quick to tell me about his contempt for cyclists. Critically, Fox is a far more ardent libertarian when it comes to lockdown.  

    Fox is particularly concerned about the impact of lockdown on jobs and the economy and is focusing his mayoral campaign around this issue. He says: “We did polling and found out that 75% of people are worried that local small businesses are going to close.” 

    “It’s costing over £1billion a day which is crap, 50,000 lost jobs on Oxford Street, 700,000 jobs lost nationwide. I think it’s really sad but I think more importantly, people need to get out and be together and have fun again and remember what it’s like to be alive,” he sighs. 

    He also says children should have never been taken out of schools. On education more generally, Fox, who was ultimately expelled from Harrow for having sex at the sixth-form ball, hopes to raise the quality of all state schools across the country and doesn’t think much of private schools. But on this policy area, he is more attitude than detail. “I hate paying private school fees for my children. If it was my choice, I wouldn’t be doing it because I just think it’s a waste of money,” he says of his two sons, from his tumultuous relationship with actor ex-wife Billie Piper. “What’s the point in spending money so you can teach them all to be posh and hang around with other elite parents? Boring.”

     Although he doesn’t know specifically how to improve all state schools, he is happy to delegate to the experts and he says, “I’m just fairly logical. So just go, what’s the logical solution to this problem?”  

    One thing he is sure about is that calls to decolonise the curriculum are problematic. Advocates of decolonisation want to interrogate the historical cannon and include a wider range of perspectives. But Fox says, if anything, we “need to recolonise the curriculum” so there is a greater emphasis on British history. “Rather than being taught to look at history through a lens of race or gender, they should probably be taught to look at history through a lens of identity and home,” he explains.  

    He believes firmly in a culture war and the ultimate aim of Reclaim, he says, is just to shift the “Overton window” — the range of ideas that voters find acceptable. “We live in a kind of two tier system in this country ‘the morally superior’ and the ‘deplorables’,” he says he represents the latter.  I wonder how he takes the temperature of the nation and how he plans on measuring the movement of the window.
     
    He doesn’t have Facebook, which I suggest might be a better way to reach potential followers, but he says: “Twatter feed gets looked at quite frequently.” He knows it’s an “utter sewer of a place” and while he used to get offended by the comments when he first joined the platform in 2009, he insists now they don’t upset him. Ironically, it was fellow Lewis actor Rebecca Front who encouraged him to sign up, though they have since had a very public falling out on the site. 
     
    Fox blames social media for the rise of what he calls “wokeism” and he says he pities the “very serious and pious” generation who are growing up in the digital age. He also says there’s an awful lot of “virtue signalling” on the site. He references actor Ralf Little who denounced Fox on Twitter but was quiet when Fox threatened to expose some “horrendous” stories. He says he has had quite a few “showbiz people” criticise him on Twitter and then privately message an apology saying, “that’s the way the game works”. Indeed, since launching his political career, his acting agent has dropped him.  

    As a member of the “Fox Acting Dynasty” – including agent Robin, his sons Edward, James, Robert, and next generation actors Emilia, Freddie, and Jack – Laurence is not an outlier. He comes from a long line of entertaining and divisive eccentrics. In 2016 for instance, Edward told The Daily Mail: “Manhood is up against it now, because they’re not being asked to be proper men… Men are more animalistic than these metropolitan, so-called ‘civilised’, ‘good’ people.” 

    Laurence Fox tells me he was raised in a matriarchy. “I didn’t even know about the patriarchy until about three years ago. I didn’t even know there was a tyrannical patriarchy,” he shrugs.  He certainly doesn’t think it is something he has benefitted from: ”Yeah, there’s a lot privileges that females get, there’s definitely some male privileges as well. I think overall, we’re equal.” 

    When I dare to ask him the naughtiest thing he’s ever done he cites his respectful attitude towards women: “You know how some of these people get into power and then you suddenly find out that they’re a bit handsy with women. I’m so grateful now I’m working in the political arena that I’ve never been that way inclined.” He suggests the naughtiest thing is probably drugs, although he doesn’t think they are that bad, either that or punching a photographer. 

    Fox is used to being scolded by the media for his rebellious behaviour but setting up Reclaim and launching a bid for mayor has led to a constant onslaught of what he perceives to be unfair criticism. Before we met, he had an interview with The Times’s Andrew Billen. Fox bet me £100 that Billen would paint him as a suicidal divorcee just looking for a reason to live or an Oswald Mosley type.  He also says Billen pointed to the way he disciplined Blaze the Labrador and Sparky the Jack Russell to suggest he might be an angry man. Indeed, Billen writes that while speaking to Fox, images of the facist popped into his head.


    Fox doesn’t seem to be motivated by a thirst for power, rather he is driven by a sense of victimhood and it seems feelings of love rather than feelings of anger. “We live in the free-est most tolerant, progressive society on earth and everybody has renounced that,” he says. His anti-COVID-regulation views come from a place of love. “A mate of mine died in a hospital, choked on her vomit because no one put a f***ing heart rate monitor on her finger.” While he doesn’t blame the NHS for her death, he says there are more important health issues than coronavirus. 
     
    Indeed, love is inked over his body. On his hand, he has a rose “because I am sometimes quite animated with my hands as you can probably see when I’m waving my hands so it’s to say there is love behind it.” He has a tattoo commemorating his two boys. Throughout the interview he keeps telling the potentially contagious yet very well behaved son that he loves him. Fox also has a cover-up of a wedding tattoo, as well as his mum’s maiden name which was Piper, “awkward”. 

    His mum died in April and he shows me a dove of peace on his arm which symbolises her going to heaven. The words on his hands are an ode to his mum’s favourite expression: “I just want freedom and space”. I felt for his loss. “No, don’t worry about it, it’s not your fault,” he says. 

    It’s been a challenging year for Fox, he’s lost his mum and his acting career and has had so many death threats, he now has a bodyguard. ”Sometimes I wake up and think when is one of these days going to be like, chilled,” he sighs. Entrance into the political arena may be taking its toll and despite his previous protestations, he seems to have an almost masochistic taste for confrontation. 

    The “chilled” days aren’t going to happen particularly soon as the battle for London Mayor is going to be tough. But he tells me he’s not worried about the “other two”. “Sadiq Khan is Boris’s stooge isn’t he? Because he’s with Boris, he’s like, more lockdowns, longer, and I don’t know what the Conservative dude is on about except doing even more controversial Tweets than I do.” What about the Green’s Sian Berry, I ask? “Who’s Sian Berry?” he says.

    I wrap up the interview and he opens the door for me, “I guess this is toxic masculinity,” he says with a friendly wink. He is sardonic and charismatic, and from the perspective of an interviewer, his candour is refreshing. He is a lifelong entertainer and so it is easy to see him as the joke candidate. But Count Binface he is not. 

    His defenders would point to the need for plain-speaking in a society where ‘wokeism’ is on the rise but for many he has crossed a dangerous line, both in the manner of his speech, and in his attitude to public health. Now Fox is really throwing his hat into the political ring, he will rightly face more scrutiny than ever before.

    Photo credit: Martin Pope

  • The Poet at Work III: Christopher Hamilton-Emery

    The Poet at Work III: Christopher Hamilton-Emery

    Continuing our regular series, we spoke to former Salt director Christopher Hamilton-Emery about juggling life as a publisher, with his work as a poet.

    Christopher Hamilton-Emery was born in Manchester in 1963. He studied sculpture, painting and printmaking at Manchester College of Art and Design before taking a degree in graphics at Leeds Polytechnic, graduating in 1986. Emery has published three collections of poetry, as well as a writer’s guide, an anthology of art and poems, and pocket editions of Emily Brontë, Keats and Rossetti. His work has been widely published in magazines and anthologised. He lives in Cromer, North Norfolk, with his wife and children.

    Until recently, Hamilton-Emery was the director of Salt Publishing, and there is a sense in which he has given so much of his time to other authors – Luke Kennard, Xan Brooks and Sian Hughes are among those who much to thank him for – that his own work may be somewhat underestimated. Recently he left his role at Salt to start a new role as Director of Operations at Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk.

    For Finito World, Hamilton-Emery has written a remarkable poem ‘And Then We’. By telling details we are transported to another time and place – a world of ‘bound flax sail cloth’, ‘would dyed with kermis’ and a ‘tangled feast of eels’. This poem asks us to wonder what deeper meaning our work has and it demands that we imagine our way back into the shared past. It could only have been written by a poet with a profound sense of meaning, and moral duty. It shows a poet at the top of his form, whose strength is to have found a new lease of life in his work.

    As ever, we print an interview with the poet after the poem itself.

    And Then We

    And then we embraced, sprawling on the green deck like scattered gulls.

    And then we knelt under bound flax sail cloth, stinking and making the day.

    And then we carried whom could not stand to the red chapel blithely.

    And then we walked through your pristine marsh without hours or love or trees.

    And then we drew about us buckram cloth and wool dyed with kermes and slept.

    And then we pierced cockleshells and yearned for a tangled feast of eels.

    And then we walked by sordid wolves and boars in corporal torment.

    And then we met with hirsute leather brigands and were lost.

    And then we starved, Lord, and knew concupiscence, gnawing your works.

    And then we heralded salt wind, seal routes and spectres and walked dully on.

    And then we saw your slipper chapel and spread our toes on a mile of stones.

    And then we wept. At the ruin of our bodies we wept. At our just ruin.

    And then we dressed and swayed, all the same, through the unifying street in a love queue.

    And then we bent and entered Nazareth to see her and to know her choice.

    And then we knew a high permanent land, our eyes fixed on accommodating angels.

    And then we fell in stone-sealed Walsingham, with our fiat ringing, unanchored, teeming.

    And then we left to see ice oak burials, flame drift farms, our backwards night talk blazing.

    And then we sailed on, working new bones, each a prayer to the star of the sea.

    Interview

    You’re rare in that you’ve managed to be both a high-functioning poet and businessman – two skills that don’t always go together in the same person! What is the relationship between poetry and work like for you? Is it antagonistic or fruitful?

    At one level work simply pays for my writing life, or at least the space to have a writing life, though this wasn’t always the case. I was an editor at Salt for over twenty years, and that was complex and at times bad for my writing. It left no room; though I didn’t realise this when I started out in 1999. Of course, I came to choose to give up a large part of my life to my authors – thousands of them over the years – but the sacrifice, if we can call it that, came to swallow up almost all of my life. There was a lot of collision between my sense of myself as a writer and my publishing activities, yet I came to be wholly subsumed into the publishing role. The switch back to being employed elsewhere has been liberating, and I’ve been able to separate out my business life from my writing life and, more broadly, my private life. I mean, I actually have a private life now! I’m only eighteen months into this new operational role but going back to being a general manager has been very rewarding. I’m fortunate to have a great boss and wonderful colleagues and the move into the Church has been personally enriching for me. So certainly very fruitful, and not antagonistic at all. In fact, I’ve never written so much. I’ve always believed that I needed to be in the world of business, I didn’t want to teach, I didn’t want to live through grants or patronage, I wanted to do something commercial and, don’t get me wrong, for years I enjoyed my private sector life. But everything comes to an end. All endings are beginnings.

    You decided to step back a bit from Salt in order to work for The Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. Can you talk us through your decision to move careers?

    I’ve touched on this earlier. However, the decision to leave Salt and move to work for a Shrine wasn’t prompted by some calculated sense of balancing my writing life. I was going through a profound personal realignment. I’d lived a successful and content secular life for forty years, I had a rather dim view of religion, when suddenly I was dislodged from my own convictions. This was in part a process of disbelief, disbelief in secular satisfactions. I came to doubt the limitations of my own world view. I also realised, and had in my own writings, the limits of science in dealing with human experience, I used to consider how we cannot live in a world without mystery, but I didn’t know quite what this phrase meant. As I was travelling through this accommodation of my past – I’m a cradle Catholic – within a matter of weeks, I was interviewed and employed by the Shrine. I shan’t bore you with the personal narrative and experiences that fed into this, but it was the right decision for me and, after two decades of publishing and running my own business, I decided to serve Christ.

    The government has recently said that poetry should be optional at the GCSE level – a significant demotion in its importance on the curriculum. What is your view on that and what do you feel the impact will be?

    Whether poetry is inherently part of a curriculum or not, it will survive as an art form, so I don’t worry about its relationship to fiction or drama in the framework of syllabus development. I don’t worry about poetry in terms of its share of the education establishment. But there’s a wider context to this and that’s the way kids come into contact with poetry, or orchestral music, or ballet, or opera, or theatre. In this sense, education is the gateway, the space that gives permission to children, and in this context there’s a political and egalitarian component to this debate around poetry. The children of middleclass parents, those enjoying private education, the rich, are afforded more opportunities for this kind of assimilation into culture, and without the rebalancing of access within state education, we end up with a form of cultural apartheid. I hope this makes some kind of sense – it’s not the qualifications or curriculum, it’s the introduction, the initiation to this cultural capital that I find disturbing. I also recognise that poetry is a pain in the arse, yet it’s meant to be awkward, tricksy, resistant to authority, dissonant – things that are hard to teach and accommodate, things that can’t easily be measured or controlled. Poetry provides a critical citizenship and, I think, helps form the unity of the person and offers a living communion today and indeed through history.

    Was there a particular teacher when you were younger who turned you onto poetry?

    If memory serves, Mr Deacon, a supply teacher or trainee English teacher at my grammar school in Manchester, who was so exasperated with the boys not paying attention to some prticular text he threw his book through a window, smashing it. The headmaster promptly turned up and invited him to step out of the classroom for a private word. This singular act made me realise that something could have so much meaning to someone that they would physically act upon it. It was the perfect illustration of genuine literary passion and it set me off on the lifelong task of trying to create beauty and rapture. Or, not getting ahead of myself, at the very least, poignancy. Anyway, I do hope Mr Deacon survived his spell at St Peter’s and went on to do great things in teaching.

    What’s your favourite poem(s) about the workplace?

    Naturally, Larkin springs to mind, though his signal contribution is rather around the comedy of drudgery – and the progress of working life to its eschatological conclusion. Working life needn’t be quite so dreary! Most of us meet our spouses in this space. Most of find friends through work. A few of us find meaning in it. Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Filling Station’ recovers the tiny spiritual attendances of working life. Plath’s ‘The Applicant’ is a terrific feminist retort to Hughes’ ‘Secretary’. Gary Snyder, Philip Levine great on work.

  • Mental Health focus: Dr. Triveni Joshi interview

    Mental Health focus: Dr. Triveni Joshi interview

    Concerns around the implication of prolonged lockdowns for children’s education and development have abounded over the last few months. Having recently spoken to campaign groups and other concerned stakeholders for our feature on self-employed parents, Finito World decided to follow up with Dr Triveni Joshi. 

    Dr Joshi is the Medical Director at Cygnet Joyce Parker Hospital, and a Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) Consultant. Dr Joshi’s main areas of interest are neurodevelopment disorders and psychosis. She also works with young people suffering from depression anxiety and early childhood trauma. Dr Joshi has extensive experience across the NHS and independent sector, as well as experience working in Specialist ASC schools and Tier 4 service in-patient units.  

    How concerning do you find the lockdown situation for children with them being out of school and having a lack of social contact?

    There is evidence that is available suggesting there were some groups of young people who coped well for some time without much reduction in life satisfaction. However, the overwhelming evidence suggests particular groups of young people such as those with pre-existing mental health conditions, the economically disadvantaged, females and LGBTQ young people have been adversely affected in terms of their mental health and wellbeing.

    Lack of social contact, not having their outlet for continuing to be actively engaged in activities, changes in the way support could be accessed, anxiety about school work and uncertainty about what the future holds, may explain some of the reasons why young people have struggled.

    How does that lack of social stimulation affect their neurological development?

    To be honest this will need further research. I have so far not seen any evidence regarding this but it’s probably too soon to be able to draw any conclusions. 

    There is a publication titled ‘Babies in lockdown’ which was written following a survey between April and June looking at lockdown babies and the impact this may have in the long term. The conclusion from that study was that there could be severe and long-lasting effects on these babies. 

    However, we are seeing a wide range of symptoms of psychological stress due to lockdown with an increased number of young people presenting with low mood, insomnia, stress, anxiety, anger, irritability, emotional exhaustion, depression and post-traumatic stress symptoms.

    As mentioned previously, young people are not socialising as before and there is an increased use of social media which has its pros and cons. The fact that they’re not socialising as usual has an effect and using social media a lot more exposes them to false messages about lockdown and COVID-19, that might have an impact. There is a possibility of exposure to more cyber bullying and other online risks with young people spending more time on social media.

    I think the messages on social media regarding COVID-19 have been very varied and for young people who are probably already anxious, that can create a lot of anxiety, not knowing what it might mean for them or their family.

    For those young people who have anxiety disorders such as OCD, the messages of COVID-19 may have exacerbated their fear of contamination and may have increased symptoms such as hand washing and any other safety behaviours they may have.

    That is interesting you talk about the messaging, because I just read a piece a couple of days ago about how the government has bought a lot of advertising on TikTok to target young people with quite scary new adverts. What do you think about that? Is it maybe a bit harsh on young people or do you think it’s necessary to get them to comply with the rules?

    I cannot see how that will increase compliance because fear is not one of the best motivators for anyone. I think honest, transparent, consistent messaging is far more helpful.

    Scaring someone takes away from the message itself and if it’s too harsh, can have a negative impact on young people. It might increase anxieties that they already have and could disengage young people. I don’t think guilt or fear is best way of engaging young people. 

    You suggested you’re seeing many patients with anxiety around contamination. Have you seen an increase in referrals for OCD and related conditions?

    From my own experience and talking to colleagues at the London Psychiatry Clinic and in the community, there’s been an increase in a wide variety of referrals such as anxiety, low mood, depression, OCD and eating disorders. Referrals are being made from GPs and other professionals as well as schools, anxious parents and carers. 

    How do you think that we as a society, and with our health care, can help children that are suffering mentally now, and those that will continue to feel the impact when we leave lockdown?

    By staying connected. I think all of us need to be aware of the impact of lockdown and loneliness and take small steps to stay connected to young people within our circle. Give someone a call or be available in the variety of platforms that you have at your disposal. 

    If you are a parent or know other parents, be supportive of each other. It is equally important that adults take time for their own breaks and look after themselves so they can better support others. 

    It is difficult and it is stressful but we need to focus on quality time with each other and each day decide if there is a need to plan a fun activity to provide something positive to look forward to.

    If the weather allows, outdoor activities are a good way to get out of the house and get exercise, this always helps.

    As far as healthcare goes, we have to be more flexible in our working. Virtual appointments are readily available, meaning we can reach out more. There are some young people who might struggle with online appointments, so we need to ensure we also offer face-to-face appointments following safety guidelines.

    We also should be offering quality information around COVID-19 and related anxieties. 

    Websites such as Mind, YoungMinds and Children’s Society have some really good information for young people on how to cope during this time. 

    As we know, schools have already adapted their way of working to safely provide education to children. Some identified vulnerable children are also attending schools and getting the support they need.

    We also need to be prepared for when children come out of lockdown as however positive a step this is, we need to be aware that this is a change from what they have been used to which will create its own problems. We need a phased return, to be flexible and to factor in that some children may have increased anxiety returning. 

    Testing will be another thing some children will be scared of. We need to support the schools, parents and children in navigating this without disadvantaging anyone. 

    I read that some neurodivergent children have actually thrived educationally in lockdown because learning remotely really suits them. Do you think that this might actually be a bit of a turning point in understanding that different children will need to learn differently and perhaps some neurodivergent children can maybe adopt a more flexible approach?

    We do need to look at the whole of last year and have some take-aways from it. 

    We have always known that schools can be difficult for some young people and there has been a percentage of young people who have been home schooled previously and are doing well. Maybe it is time to start looking at flexible ways of learning and teaching, utilising the best of both worlds and taking into account different home circumstances. We are used to traditional ways and this may be the time to challenge those traditions and explore new ways and new methods to support young people through education. 

    As you said, when children come back after such a long period of isolation they will need to be cautiously reintroduced, what kind of behavioural symptoms do you think might occur when children go back to school?

    As mentioned previously, some young people will struggle with going back to school and they may struggle with the increase in social demands that they will be exposed to.

    While we have discussed the downsides, reintroduction to a different routine after a while is always going to be hard.

    We may see increased anxiety in facing those demands, as well as increased anxiety about catching the infection and we may see worries about what next and if this could possibly happen again. 

    One of their spokespeople for UsforThem told me last week that they’ve been speaking to school governors and headteachers that are quite worried because there’s been a significant increase in safeguarding referrals, particularly incidents of abusive trauma at home. Are you concerned that there might be a tidal wave of trauma to come from this generation of children that may have been in unstable homes?

    Yes, during lockdown there has been an increase in referrals to safeguarding. Increasing difficulties within the family, stresses around finance, increase in parental mental health problems, children not having their usual contacts or people they could talk to have probably all contributed to difficult situations at home and led to increased referrals. 

    As we come out of lockdown, we need to ensure the mental health and emotional wellbeing of children and young people is high on the agenda. We need to ensure we pre-empt and are prepared to support young people so that the long-lasting negative effects of lockdown are minimised. 

    Dr Triveni Joshi is a leading consultant psychiatrist in London who specialises in child and adolescent psychiatry. She has over 17 years worth of experience in psychiatry and over 14 years working with children and their families. Her areas of expertise include autism, mood disorders, behavioural problems, anxiety, ADHD and OCD.

    For further information:https://londonpsychiatry.clinic

  • Zedify CEO Rob King: the man making our cities greener

    Zedify CEO Rob King: the man making our cities greener

    Alice Wright 

    The UK Government declared a Climate Emergency in the summer of 2019. There is no single definition of what action this mandates, but MPs have pledged to reduce the country’s carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. Whilst not the ‘carbon neutral by 2030’ goal sought by campaigners such as Extinction Rebellion, it is still a sizeable task. 

    Rob King is making lowering emissions in UK cities his life’s work. Alongside co-founder and CCO Sam Keam, King is responsible for Zedify, a zero emissions delivery company with depots across ten UK cities. And Zedify is expanding, having opened a branch in Bristol last month.  

    We begin by discussing the ongoing restrictions and how they have affected businesses for better or worse. “The pandemic hasn’t really changed much in terms of keeping connected,” King says. “However, people’s expectations on needing a physical meeting have changed. I no longer have to travel all the way to Wimbledon from Cambridge for a one-hour meeting.” It’s not surprising that restrictions seem to have benefited rather than hindered Zedify: after all, delivery services are booming and expected to continue to rise. 

    The story of Zedify’s origins goes back about sixteen years when King was looking to set up a business with his brother. While hitchhiking in the Lake District, King got a lift with a man who was doing cycling courier work in York. The encounter planted a seed. “It seemed like a fun, outdoorsy job,” he recalls. “At the time, I was doing expeditions all over the world, and my brother was in the army getting fed up with being sent to Iraq. We always wanted to go into business together, so we thought this would be fun.” 

    The brothers first spoke about doing cycling couriers for small items, such as moving flowers and material from printers, but soon moved into bigger items that could be taken by cargo bikes. “There were almost no cargo bikes in the world when we started,” King continues. “We found a mad, wacky designer who had designed Chris Boardman’s bike when he won the Olympics.” The brothers grew the business around Cambridge and then three years ago King spoke to his financial adviser: he sensed that Zedify’s time for expansion had arrived. “The urban landscape was changing, people were talking about emissions a lot more, and about reducing car and van use,” he says.

    By creating a licensed network, Zedify expanded into other cities, including London, and were able to access deliveries coming from outside the cities, as well as deliveries contained within the city. “We knew that cargo bikes were the most efficient vehicle for use in cities, but our competitors don’t use them because they are coming from depots 50 or 100 miles away. They have to use a van, which is good for going up and down the M1 but not for going about the city.” By using cargo bikes, King explains, “we want to make our cities better, to reduce congestion, reduce emissions. That’s how we sell our services: better deliveries and better cities.” 

    Included in this better service, are narrower time windows for clients and ethical treatment of Zedify’s staff, now numbering around 150 people. “Even now, 95 per cent of our industry competitors are engaged in the gig economy with self-employed drivers,” King tells me. “Instead, we decided to hire living wage-employed drivers. If something goes wrong, they’re protected and will still get paid.” 

    Although there has been huge interest from larger corporations that have recently been pressured into making their own climate targets, King remains skeptical of their motives and keen to keep Zedify true to its mission of providing an exceptional as well as ethical service. He admits that the environmental angle is a great selling point but that “the price and service must be right, otherwise companies will use us once and it won’t last or they will use us in one of their cities but not all. They will use us as a bit of greenwashing. We want to make sure we offer such a good service for such a good price that anyone would take us up. That’s when we will have the biggest impact on our cities, on our environment and make them better.” 

    As well as private work, Zedify conducts work for local councils. Waltham Forest Council supported the set-up of Zedify’s operation in London during the ‘Mini Holland’ scheme funded by the Mayor’s office a few years ago. The aim was to recreate London streets in a Dutch style, a harbinger of the current Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. “Initially local businesses were up in arms questioning how they would get their deliveries in and out. So the council put out a tender for a cargo bike delivery scheme.” 

    With that success under their belts Zedify now encourages other councils to review their work tenders, asking them to consider whether a van is truly needed for delivery work, to at least give firms like Zedify the opportunity to bid for the work. 

    On the controversial Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, King is optimistic: “We’ve got a really good case study here. People want clean air, clean streets but need to balance that with being able to get around and make deliveries. Because of Low Traffic Neighborhoods deliveries in vans are taking too long, so companies are starting trials with us. Businesses are adept at change. They can utilise our schemes or go in-house and use low emission vehicles or their own cargo bikes that are more suitable to liveable cities.” 

    King explains how city schemes that challenge businesses can work out for the better. “We use our depots as consolidation hubs. This means that we can do deliveries with our cargo bikes completing several routes in a day. Whereas a van would normally only do one route in a day. We can actually do two to three times the volume of work.” For example, Zedify works with a veg box supplier in Cambridge, which used to drive into town with their old diesel van to make around ten deliveries. They now drop the produce at Zedify’s depot on the outskirts of town and then the last mile of transport is done on cargo bikes. “That’s a great service for a company like that which wants to focus on other things rather than driving.”

    Zedify has won significant recognition for its work, and came runner-up for the ‘Clean Air in Cities Award’ from the prestigious Ashden Foundation the year before last. King has no thoughts of slowing down anytime soon: “We’re still small but there is definitely potential for changing the whole way deliveries are made.” 

  • Talan Skeels-Piggins: ‘Ask yourself: how many people have you helped?’

    Talan Skeels-Piggins: ‘Ask yourself: how many people have you helped?’

    I wanted to become a P.E teacher because I am passionate about sport. In a team game I always enjoy working with others and individually. I’m a bit sad that I’m no longer teaching, but life changes and we’ve got to move with it. If you’re always looking over your shoulder at what you were then you’re never looking forward at what you could be. 

    I was in the Navy as both a regular and then as a reservist. In the regulars, I was a fighter controller in the operations room. I was only in my early twenties and there was a massive amount of responsibility placed on me at that young age. When I was a divisional officer, I would mentor a group of sailors that were in my charge, helping them along with their careers. That was very rewarding. 

    I did six years as a regular and then I was a reservist. Shortly after I joined the reserves in November 2002, I was paralysed, at the beginning of March 2003, as a result of a motorcycle accident. Initially the Navy dismissed me, but I wanted to go on my own terms. I argued my case to the medical board of survey and proved that I could carry out the same requirements an able-bodied officer would have to. I did the bleep test, the mile and a half run in a race chair, the weapons handling test, the gas mask handling test and I passed each one for my age group. I did everything that would have been expected of me if I had been able-bodied.

    Then I went to the medical board of survey and put forward all the things that I could do. I accepted the considerations and understood that I would not be going to sea again, and I ended up working with NATO. 

    My case has set an important precedent in allowing disabled people to remain in the armed forces. Back in 2003, I wasn’t allowed to tell anybody the outcome as the Navy were concerned that the floodgates would open and all those that had been previously dismissed would want to return. Then there were all the injuries from Afghanistan and Iraq, and people were able to use my ruling as a precedent to continue serving in whatever shape they could. It’s great to see that the military now do not simply give up on the wealth of knowledge that these people have.   

    We learn as we go through life; some of the learning we don’t even know we’ve got. We experience things and they remain dormant inside us. After the paralysis, I was in a pretty dark place, this massive change had happened to me and when we have change happen to us, all we can see is the change. Initially, for me, it was a space I didn’t want to be in. 

    Luckily for me, I had a chat with a guy, who had also become disabled, who had come in for a regular check-up, while I was laid up in hospital. He told me about the opportunities that were still there for him. He started to list things: he still had a girlfriend; he still drove a car; he lived by himself. Then he said he had been skiing. I couldn’t believe that; I thought it was incredible. That became my little goal: to get out of hospital and to learn to ski.  I didn’t know at the time that I would become a gold medallist in the European championships.

    In order to do that, I had to accept what had happened to me. The more I looked internally, the more I realised that we have this untapped power, resilience and energy inside of us. I call it the little person inside. I believe that we all have it. I don’t have any magical ingredient. I’m not superhuman. I’m not special. We should use ourselves as our greatest source of inspiration. You don’t need to look externally for inspiration.  

    Motorcycling would become another passion. As with the Navy, I went about getting permission to race motorbikes by looking at the arguments as to why I couldn’t do it and then I would try and show what I would do to overcome that obstacle. Gradually I worked through all the different obstacles, and jumped through all the hoops that they put me in. 

    To finally do it, it was the most thrilling thing I had ever done and it then opened the pathway to others. Since that point in time there have been quite a few paralysed motorcycle racers and all they have to do now is go to a club, get their license like anyone else and they can race any capacity bike. There are no restrictions placed on them. 

    In Great Britain you are either a motorcycle racer or you’re not, and that was what I was fighting for. It is a really fabulous thing for me as a paraplegic to go and compete with able-bodied cyclists. It’s a little bit of escapism because for that moment in time I am simply a racer and I’m not being treated any differently from an able-bodied racer. I feel free from my wheelchair, my disability and the restrictions that have been placed on me due to an accident. For my own personal mental health it is vital that I get to compete against able-bodied people. 

    I set up a charity called The Bike Experience. I take disabled people and help them to learn to ride motorbikes. We’ve taught over 400 people so far. Some people come once and it’s the catalyst for them to go off and do other things, whether that be triathlons or fly planes. Some people come back and they’re able to ride on the road again. You see someone arrive nervous; when they leave they look like they can take on the world. 

    After 13 years of being paralysed, I had a conversation with myself about what it means to be a human being. I asked myself: ‘How do I validate my existence?’. The answer I came up with was: ‘How many people have you helped?’ and I realised that since I’ve been paralysed I’ve helped more people than I would have done if I had been able-bodied. So therefore, I wouldn’t change what has happened to me. That moment was when I fully accepted the change in my life.      

    It’s a very difficult time right now, and everyone is experiencing change: they’re allowed to be upset. Sometimes when you have things that affect your life it sets off these waves or these ripples in your timeline, but it’s realising that it is only temporary and the next peak is coming. Don’t feel as though you are weak for being upset. We can all grow and learn by giving something back. I think we don’t take enough time to do self-reflection. It’s amazing what you can get from it.  Everyone is an amazing person, you just have to believe in it.

    Talan Skeel-Piggins was talking to Alice Wright

    https://www.existentialbiker.com/the-bike-experience.html#
  • Food and drink focus: ‘People are fed up with things that aren’t good for you’ – Gabriel Bean

    Food and drink focus: ‘People are fed up with things that aren’t good for you’ – Gabriel Bean

    By Alice Wright

    A record 500,000 people signed up for Veganuary 2021, pledging to only eat plant-based foods for the first month of the year. This is double the figures for 2019 and also the first year that major supermarkets have run adverts promoting the movement. 

    I spoke to Gabriel Bean, founder of Grounded, a company which makes plant-based protein shakes about the movement towards plant-based products and sustainability shifts in the food and drink industry. “For me the move to plant-based kicked off a couple of years ago,” Bean explains. “But it’s taken a few years of test and trial. This probably marks the year that people are really feeling the benefits from it.”  

    Has the Veganuary movement impacted business? “I don’t think Veganuary necessarily changes business for us. We had exceptionally high sales volumes going into January in the November and December period as well. What plays a role is the attitude towards plant-based products. People are fed up with food and drink products that are not good for you and not good for the planet.”

    In the food and drink sector, sustainability was a luxury even a couple of years ago. If you want to package your product sustainably it costs more and it’s harder work. It’s particularly difficult for smaller brands to be sustainable and this is something that will have to change in the future. 

    “Sustainability has always been at the core,” Bean continues. “It was in the top three things to consider as we developed our new products. It was so important that this product be sustainable, not so we could jump on the sustainability hype but so we could scale consciously. I can sleep well at night knowing that the packaging has come from a responsible source and isn’t going to be floating in the seas of the Maldives. I think it’s a requirement now, if you’re not sustainable then you haven’t met the basic criteria for food and drink.” 

    When I think about protein shakes, I associate them with busy people commuting in and out of the office at ungodly hours with no time to cook a nutritious meal. According to Bean, Grounded’s shakes have managed to avoid being pigeon-holed like this. “We launched the product in August after the first lockdown,” he says. “So we were developing our sales plan for what life would be like after the first lockdown. We put a lot of time looking into online direct to customer retail – it’s an exponentially growing space anyway and retail sales are struggling.” 

    The other marketplace change I’m interested to hear about is the closure of gyms, another usual protein-shake hotspot. “Now people are working out from home,” Gabriel explains. “There aren’t the options to go into a post-workout gym store so we’ve angled the whole online custom to a workout from home attitude. It’s worked really well, and we have several campaigns on Instagram getting a lot of traffic.” 

    So what are his prospects for 2021. “There is going to be so much talk on veganism and sustainability this year. I think it’s really important to gauge from businesses what their core beliefs, morals and ethos are. A lot of companies will be jumping on this as a marketing opportunity. We at Grounded don’t see sustainability as a market opportunity but as the future of where food and drink are going.” 

    Picture credit: Tony Webster

  • Thomas Heatherwick: ‘Before Covid, the idea of having a study sounded so Victorian’

    Thomas Heatherwick: ‘Before Covid, the idea of having a study sounded so Victorian’

    by Thomas Heatherwick

    At the Heatherwick Studio, we’re trying to be growers of more human place making: what’s crucial is the experience dimension of the person using the building. That might sound obvious, but I sensed even as a kid that we’re too often led astray by other forces and not by the needs of the person using a structure.

    Some big positives can come out of this strange and tragic situation we’ve all been living through. There’s been a chance to think from new angles. That’s partly because you need to, given the new context. But it’s also welcome: I always thought it would be very hard for me to take a sabbatical, and I envied those around me who could do that. Of course, it was a partial envy – I’m so lucky to have the diverse rollercoaster of impressions I have. My studio is about embracing change and finding ways to adjust. That’s what excites me. The most interesting thing has been reflecting on what the virus means – and how it’s going to change our lives. Before the pandemic, there was more and more sharing – cars, workspaces and living spaces were becoming more efficient because people might live together in different ways. I was saddened at the outset of coronavirus: it felt like a kind of retreat into an understandable self-preservation and selfishness.

    Before all this happened, people didn’t think they needed an office in their home – the idea of having a study sounded so Victorian. Throughout lockdown, people have been cowering in their bedrooms and trying to pretend it’s not their bedroom: so people will be making their homes better in advance of a possible second wave, and investing in any eventuality. Post-Covid homes will be better homes.

    But public togetherness is what motivates me in the different projects we work on. Take our shopping center Coal Drop’s Yard for example. What motivates me isn’t getting people to shop. What’s exciting is that it’s an excuse at a time when governments don’t invest in public place making to create an interesting space. I wish the government would do more: they had their fingers badly burned in the 1960s and 1970s by terrible architecture, and so they retreated and let the private sector come in.

    I’ve always made very tactile buildings and though obviously Covid-19 will change the extent to which we touch things, I think you also touch things with your eyes. The way light falls off a computer screen, for instance, is very dead and simplistic.

    But light falling across more complex detail and texture is something that you absorb. If you’re in the mountains you can’t touch them, but you can still feel their form.

    We’ve got 200 people here, and I’m thankful for being an older organization. Many of us have worked together for a long time, and we can sustain that over digital communication. There are unexpected benefits. The world’s been conspiring for the last two decades to get us to this point. The digital revolution has been setting us up to do this; it’s astonishing how effective we’ve managed to be at home.

    But I don’t think in aggregate its better. There’s no real substitute for being in the studio. Our studio is full of models and memorabilia: it’s our collective memory. It’s important to see your failures, your test pieces, your experiments, and your thought-triggers. We all think we have a flawless memory – but we don’t.

    We’re working with one new organization, rethinking large amounts of workspace. I think people are aware this has long ramifications for everybody. It spreads across everything. We just finished a Maggie’s cancer care center in Leeds. It’s a relatively small project but it’s trying to engage with the issues someone with a cancer diagnosis might face. How do you support that health journey? If you look at hospitals today it’s as if the emotional condition doesn’t impact their physical journey.

    Looking back at the Garden Bridge, it was a manifestation of this urge to try and make everything connect more to people. A bridge doesn’t just need to be getting from one side to the other: the middle of a bridge is one of the most incredible places you can be. Maybe one day the politics will support our intention to create a new garden for Londoners.

    Thomas Heatherwick is the founder of the Heatherwick Studio.