Embracing Public Practice: A Journey from private studios to designing in the Local Authority

Embracing Public Practice_ A Journey from private studios to designing in the Local Authority_
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[00:00:00]

Stephen Drew: Hello everyone in private practice. Maybe you are in public practice. I've said the name already. That's a little hint. We'll go live in 30 seconds. Is everyone having a pret sandwich? Ham hock. What's on today? This is A C P D, right? You can put it as your R O B A points. We're gonna learn a lot. Okay? I better get professional.

10 seconds. Hello everyone. Thank you for joining me on this special lunchtime slot. I am thrilled because it's always easier [00:01:00] when there's people on stage with me and I'll be upfront. It's gonna be an exciting one because these lovely, talented individuals who are currently working in the public sector, and I've maybe come from a more private, traditional Architecture or urban design route, are here to share all of their insights of being involved in public practice.

Now, some of them may not have met each other, some of them have not met me, but they joined me on the stage and we'll all learn a little bit together about that transition from private practice to public practice. So without favor ado, I have these amazing guests on the stage, so I'm gonna try and do it virtually around here.

But I have here the fantastic Matt. Ready? Is that Gla? How are you today, Matt? You all right?

Matt Rudy: very good. Thanks.

Stephen Drew: Brilliant. Matt, I'll tell you what in a second, we, you can maybe introduce yourself a little bit more, but before that I'm just gonna go [00:02:00] down, down this side. I've got the fantastic Francis Moss at E Council. How are you, Francis?

You all right?

Francis Moss: Yeah, really good.

Stephen Drew: You've persevering with all my technical and lack of briefs and everything, but thank you so much from tuning in from Elin Council. Thank you. And last, definitely, not least, a fellow Welsh counterpart from South Wales. And I'm gonna hopefully not butcher your name. Grinnell. Grinnell.

Grinnell. Jared,

Gwenai Jerrett: Yes,

Stephen Drew: I. I almost did it, sister, the Swanie and me. I was terrible in Welsh. My teacher used to get me into tra say Steven's table, why are you talking? But I promise I will be quiet and listen for this. But thank you so much joining us from all dizzy. I appre appreciate him. So yeah, we're all in the stage.

We'll all learn about each other, but the kind of the loose Fred here is that you've all been involved in public practice [00:03:00] now. Maybe Matt, you can do a double whammy and if that's cool, you can tell us a little bit about yourself and then a little bit about how you got involved in public practice and then what you do at Chile, if that's all right.

Matt Rudy: Yeah, sure thing. So I'm Matt Roddy and I'm currently a principal project officer at the GLA regeneration team. And so bit about my background is I from Newcastle, studied in Newcastle for my part one and part two, did a, did my year out, kind of sandwich in between those two. And then came to London in 2014.

Started working at a practice called Hawkins Brown, who do lots of good work and focusing a lot on kinda housing stuff. And then, yeah, qualified while I was there. Was there for about six years. And then in 2020 it was a quiet year for a lot of people, but not for me. I was just like let's have a little bit of a change and we're gonna hop into the G L a.

And so in May, 2020, I joined the G L A regeneration team in the Good Growth by Design [00:04:00] program. Which is the mayors program for kinda quality and inclusion in all the built environment. And it's a program that supports all the GLA and tfl kinda different bodies and teams. And in that kind of role I was supporting the London review panel.

Which is the mayors review panel service. And that is populated by the Mays design advocates. So at the time that was 52 of kind of some of London's best and brightest urbanist architects. All also work on there was supporting public practice through the play shaping capacity survey.

So that's a biannual kind of survey for all the 33 plus two development corporations of which LDC is here today. All of their play shaping teams, that's planning architects. And just to get a sense of what capacity are in those brewers in needing to or build up those capacities to deliver on the kinda priorities for the communities that they serve.

Yeah, so I think that's, I dunno if you need any bit more detail on

Stephen Drew: That's very cool and thank, yeah, thank you. And Hawke Brown, really cool [00:05:00] company and all. Also really interesting what you've done at G L A and so maybe we can, jump into that a little bit later, but very cool. Intro now, Francis, what was your journey all the way to E in healing council and tell me a little bit about your background, if that's cool.

Francis Moss: Yeah. I'm actually part Swiss, part British, but I grew up in Canada and I did, that's why I did my Architecture studies. And I went to work in Switzerland, get some really hands-on practical Architecture experience. Lots of really great small practices there. A lot of really well-designed Architecture.

And I came to London to work for David Chipperfield, who's.

Stephen Drew: Oh.

Francis Moss: big hotshot, but to be honest with you, I'm sure some of your listeners who might work for hotshot architects might also had the experience that working for them is not is not always everything is toted up to be or they're really interested projects.

So [00:06:00] I moved on from that. I actually did a master's in city design and social science at the LSC Cities. Which was really good to I guess see cities from a bit more of a different point of view, more social angle really. And that and I didn't go back to Architecture after that.

I actually went off and did all sorts of different works around cities and something you couldn't really put a name to really, you call it urbanism urbanist urban design planning. A bit of all of those things really. Did did some mapping of although com Park Royal area, we actually did a massive sensors for the G L A of all the almost 2000 businesses in that industrial area of London where now there's the a development corporation and lots of things happening and.

Got I did some consultancy work, working with some consultancies in [00:07:00] regeneration. More on that side for, often for local authorities but got a bit tired, I think mainly of also jumping around from project to project and place to place and not really knowing what sort of happened with all my strategic sort of work and things that I'd set up.

And I also applied to public practice and that was then during the lockdown. And, never would've actually thought of going to eing but was matched up with eing and now extremely happy in eing Because I've also come back to one of the, one of the more interesting themes that I've worked in in the past.

And that's industrial space in cities, which is often very much overlooked. But becoming more and more important actually. Yeah. So that's it in a nutshell, really.

Stephen Drew: Brilliant. Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. And cuz sometimes even when I was a part one, that's [00:08:00] sometimes necessarily going into the industry, it was a little bit different than I anticipated. And like you said, different companies might not be suited for everyone. Some people love maybe the more Excuse me, but I've had a phone coming off.

I need to turn my phone off for the live stream. But, you sign up for a practice and the experience is different than maybe you anticipated before or maybe it's quite interesting that you've done that switch over and maybe we will return to that in a little bit, in more detail. But I'm interested in, in, in my fellow Welsh Bren and why you perhaps wanted to escape.

I wanted to escape Swanee, even though I like going back home to there for different reasons. And I came to London to study Architecture. But maybe can you tell me your journey and how we've gone all the way from South Wales to the L D C? I would love to know.

Gwenai Jerrett: Yeah I am, grew up in a very small village in southwest Wales, so to be honest, I couldn't get out of there fast enough. And London was [00:09:00] the most different that I could think of that at that point in Britain at least. So yeah, I'm grew up in, in Wales, but I'm also half French. And after I studied in London my undergrad, I then ran off to Paris where I did my year out.

And that's, I guess probably really where my interest in social hosing really grew. Cause I felt at the time, They were just doing a lot better than what, what was happening in Britain. This is about 2008, 2009 before the sort of housing design standards even came out in London. So yeah, then I came back to London cuz unfortunately being an intern in Paris doesn't really pay or pays minimally.

So I finished my studies and actually ended up working in populace for a couple of years doing stadiums.

Stephen Drew: Oh, okay.

Gwenai Jerrett: which was, it was interesting at first, but it wasn't really where my passion was. I really wanted to work in [00:10:00] housing. So I eventually managed to get a job at Cullinan Studio and after that all also at Metropolitan Workshop. So in yeah, we'll maybe come to it more detail, but there's been various points in my life where I've wondered do I really wanna be an Architect? So I then also run away to the Netherlands to do ceramics for a while. Came back, got an Architecture job, and then a friend basically sent me a Guardian article about public practice.

I thought that sounds like the job I didn't know I really wanted. So I went for it and was part of the sort of experimental first cohort of public practice. Yeah, and I was placed at the London Legacy Development Corporation. Some people know what that is, but I do spend a lot of time trying to explain to people what L D C is.

So it's the it's the kind of mayoral corporation that was set up to [00:11:00] deliver on the Olympic Legacy. It's a pretty broad remit that included delivering the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, which is, now open and has been for a long time, but also delivering 5,000 homes on our own land which is all the sort of residual Olympic land and, other parts of L D C do look after the venues like the London Aquatic Center.

So yeah, LLDC is a, also has planning powers over this particular area. So my first role at L D C was In two parts. It was partly providing design advice as a design officer for the planning authorities. So as well as the 5,000 homes that, that we're delivering on our own land.

There's, don't quote me on this, but 20, 30,000 homes that are also being delivered in the area. Some pretty major projects like a new U C L campus Victorian Albert Museum is unsat, as well as our opening up posts here. So there's [00:12:00] quite a lot going on in terms of regeneration of the area.

So I had, part of my role was was providing design advice on those projects. And the other part was as a design manager for the delivery of our own neighborhoods. Yeah. And my role's kind of shifted, so now I pretty much work for the development directorate, which is the focus on our own assets and our own neighborhoods.

Stephen Drew: Very cool. My goodness. All different parts of London. I think Stratford's quite a nice part of town to live in at the moment. I went down there and now I live in Lewis room, so I'm broadcasting from Lewis room, so if the internet goes down, it's because Lewis room needs faster internet. But I'm here so far.

I really like Stratford. Now, you touched upon this it's quite interesting saying the roles change and Francis, you talked a bit about earlier, like you never in a million years imagine that you would be going to Ling council. Can you like an open to anyone here if you want to jump in? [00:13:00] What was it like then that initial part of the transition?

Okay, you've signed up, we're public practice, you've known the populace of the world. We'd been doing the fancy clean David Chipperfield buildings, as you're saying, what's the initial bit like going to a public office? Is it a cultural shock? Was it quite inclusive? Was it different? Does anyone have any thoughts they'd like to jump in on that, to share their experience of that initial jump into the public sector?

Gwenai Jerrett: I've got plenty of thoughts.

Stephen Drew: One.

Gwenai Jerrett: I'd never worked in a corporate office before and L D C at the time was on the 10th floor of a glass building on top of Westfield, Stratford, and I found that incredibly alienating. So that was a bit of a shock to the system. Like at Lenin Studio and Metropolitan Workshop, they're in these old warehouse buildings on the canal or, a kind of in the, in right in the middle of Clark and so that was quite different.

[00:14:00] Yeah, being in Stratford where, there's a lot more going on now, but again, like having been used to being in the center of town drinks after work really easy. Friday drinks don't necessarily exist that much in the public sector. That was another bit of a shock. Yeah. Does that any of you guys wanna.

Stephen Drew: That's interesting. So that was the l D experience. Francis, what was it like training Eland C at first?

Francis Moss: I think what's I guess coming into, that point about coming into sort of a big office space because, councils are really big entities but it is actually made up of lots of different teams doing very different things. I had a very strange experience obviously because I started during the lockdown, so I was actually working at home.

Which I think brought also some interesting new ways of working opportunities in the sense that, you start somewhere in an office, you'd just be surrounded by lots of people and you [00:15:00] dunno who's who. But, these days with Microsoft teams and all of that, you can just go look up people, see, how they fit who their boss is, who's working for them.

And yeah, just go, just call up people surpris. And they're always they're always quite shocked when you just call them outta the blue at first. But it's a good opportunity cuz you wouldn't do that in an office. Just go and interrupt someone at their desk. That you don't know or who's, higher up in the organization or things, or from completely different teams.

So that, that was interesting. But now people are back in the office, it's a bit half-hearted back in the office. And I think that two different things. It has a lot of different, has lots of advantages, more flexibility especially if you've got kids and things like that.

But also yeah, it means it means you still, you've got a bit of both sides, but I think especially for younger people starting in the office, obviously it I think [00:16:00] often it feels like they're, you'd want to be in a place that's a bit more buzzing and things. And I'd say from that point of view, it's just, I important I guess, to get a bit of a sense of what your actual team.

Is and interestingly, my area regeneration team in England council was pretty new as growing since then. In the, I then proceeded to hire someone else from public practice the year after that I had started. So our team has grown and we're a few people from public practice.

And I just had a comment today from someone from a developer who's saying, yeah, it looks, your team seems, pretty active and things because I guess often the outside view of a council is, don't really see who's doing what and where the activity is happening.

So I think, just like the team is really important and just seeing where you [00:17:00] land, whether you. Look to get into or interested in going to a public a local authority or a public body,

Stephen Drew: Yeah.

Francis Moss: public practice, which is a great way of getting in with some different skill sets.

But also, there's other opportunities to apply for jobs as well that

Stephen Drew: It sounds now you burning to say something. Is that correct or am I reading in the room right,

Gwenai Jerrett: you are reading the world room, yeah, I guess that shocked the system and that that's what public practice is really good for because you can arrive and be a bit surprised at how different everything is from the private sector and being able to go and meet up with, 15 other people every other Friday and just all share that experience with each other just makes it so much easier.

And I think it's yeah

Francis Moss: the cohorts are bigger now, Grinnell,

Gwenai Jerrett: yeah. Okay. It was,

Francis Moss: 30, 40 people.

Stephen Drew: My goodness.

Gwenai Jerrett: Yeah, I don't, yeah, I guess it's a bit different [00:18:00] now than when I started, I did it before covid and there were only 70 universe. So I don't know. Yeah. Maybe you guys can give your perspective, but it's, I do think it saved me from that. Everything's so different.

Everyone's so different.

Done so differently and then, yeah, to just go and vent it's like a soft London into the public sector. I'd say

Stephen Drew: Yeah. Nice. I'll tell you what, I'll bring up the links now. And Matt, if you feel free, do you wanna add anything or share your thoughts when you got to the GLA as well?

Matt Rudy: no, I think I agree with Francis and Grinnell's kind of perspective on there is a culture shock on scale and the way things operate. I think what was really helpful is through public practice is that cuz in Architecture you've got very clearly defined expectations of where you could apply to jobs within that sector.

That you're a part one, a part two, a part three, an Architect with housing or education or you do delivery or you do planning and it's all quite compartmentalized, which is I think a lot of [00:19:00] architects I know I do really found that quite It was quite a clear trajectory into that.

I think we, a lot of people went into it with an idea of what Architecture was gonna be for them. And so when you've got a seven year plan ahead of you, you can relax gently on the kind of periphery of your mind and go I know the end goal in seven plus years, and that I'll build up my kind of like sense of what Architecture is through those seven years.

And then when you get to the end of the seven years and you're qualified, you're like, and now what? And then what's the next step? And is that sideways? Is it just something else? Or is it developing larger or targeting awards? And I think at that point you have, it was a really good opportunity for me, and I know a lot of my kind of contemporaries and friends from Architecture when they qualified and they'd been working for a few years they just take a step back and go and why did I go into Architecture?

What did I want to do out of this? And for me it was always like, A strong kind of social agenda, focus on all of my academic projects. And, when you're working in kind of isolation, you can really explore what the built environment can do to address kind of certain issues around [00:20:00] pension time bomb or around kind of itinerant housing.

You, you've got that complete agency and when you move into professional setting with, there's obviously absolutely kind of commercial interest in practice that those have to take a, maybe a slight kind of they'd have to sit on the side a little bit when you're you get given projects that you have to deliver on.

And then I think the, so the culture shock was real. And I think when you're working from coming from an environment where you are delivering on outputs and number of drawings or there's a certain number of like, Deliverables on your Friday data drop or your Revit model or your you're building up like this kind of head of steam of I know how to deliver and I deliver well, and then you go into the public sector and it is you can't do that.

You, it's not in isolation that you can work in. Architects don't work in isolation, but you do work to delivering on outputs. Whereas in the public sector, it is a much more dis you've gotta bring everyone on board with you. You are working at a strategic upstream level helping to shape briefs that will roll downhill and turn into the projects that you would've been working on in [00:21:00] practice.

And that was really exciting. But a culture shock. Cuz I'm in the first few weeks, I'm like, I'm not producing anything. I'm not, I'm, where's the reports? Where's the drawings? Where's all the things that I'm used to? Like stacking up and going that's what I've achieved this week.

In the public sector. It was about those connections, those community, like the stakeholder groups that you bring on board. And especially the Great London Authority, which is, again, it's a strategic authority. So we do we even slightly further away from maybe some of the borough and borough kind of work.

Some, Francis and Grinnell, you are actually working on, you'll be looking at sites and developing those maybe at Great London Authority. You're looking even above that, looking at priorities and geographical areas are spread quite dispersing. And just before I forget, there's another one, just the benefits of public practice in that.

And going back to my previous point, as architects, we know and we can pigeon us, pigeonhole ourselves into where in the built environment sector we sit, you know what skills you're on, what kind of jobs you could apply to. In the private sector, there's a kind of an opacity about like public sector jobs and I [00:22:00] think that's because they get filtered to the organizational machine, including HR departments are very helpful, but sometimes they become very generic and very like abstract kind of app and descriptions of what you're expected to be doing.

I would not have felt comfortable applying directly to a role in a local authority or public sector position. However, coming through public practice I was matched with that role. So I was like, if you think that this is the role for me and you've got the confidence, that's the right. Seniority and I've got the right kind of level of skills to deliver in this role.

I'm on board. I trust public practice and trust the GLA for matching with me. So that was a great crutch to go into the public sector. And then, yeah, again, just on Gina's point, having, I think Michael goal was 30 people meeting every couple of weeks just to kinda go what's everyone been doing?

What challenges have you all come across? We've all got the same stuff, but we've all got the same ambition and energy, and let's ask the stupid questions amongst us and we'll go back into our into our authorities and I'll see you in two weeks time to talk about that again. So yeah, I think that was the, that really did soften the [00:23:00] entry point to try and have the confidence to start in that role.

And also while you are in there for the first few months,

Gwenai Jerrett: Also, the thinking about the applying for roles in the public sector pub the public practice interview process is pretty grueling, but compared with an L D C interview, it's actually public sector interviews are a different beast from private sector interviews. In the private sector you just go for a chat with just go for a chat with someone, show them your lovely portfolio, and it's all quite informal.

Whereas in the. Public sector, certainly L D C. And from my understanding, the gla, there's a, it's almost like exam. It's a bit like doing your part three exam questions, but on a different theme. It's whereas public practice is, does slightly ease you into that with their process.

Even though even that feels quite, alien. From what you're used to.

Stephen Drew: I tell you

Matt Rudy: FaceTime star approach.

Gwenai Jerrett: Yes. Star. Yeah.

Stephen Drew: I don't know what a star is, but [00:24:00] maybe what would be a nice thing that we can talk about for anyone that's not familiar when we are talking about public practice. Now, this isn't a sponsored segue because this is not sponsored. I actually really what public practice does and it Like we've all talked about the stories here is helping people who are interested in the public sector get into the public sector like you're talking about now.

And I used to be in Architecture. I wasn't sure I wanted to be an Architect, and I found my way. I fell through the system. I landed in recruitment, which is maybe I should have gone to the public sector. It wasn't public practice at the time, but I think it's a really useful resource.

And you can check out the website. I did bring it up earlier and you can have a little look at it. So not sponsored. It's a good resource. Although I will say Autodesk, if you are out there, I am very open to being sponsored, especially that Autodesk money. But public practices are really cool. Website, and I'm very pleased that this year, [00:25:00] now it sounds like to me, someone that hasn't done it from what you're talking about Then, so you apply to public practice.

You, you basically say, listen, I'm an Architect or an urban designer. I'm really interested in doing something different. I don't really wanna work in the private sector. Or I'm exploring the idea to the public sector. And then they help you through the process. Is that about right then, guys?

Francis Moss: Yeah. So the way it works at the moment is that you I'm, it is probably works similarly all the way through, but you'd, there's an online, I think the deadlines on the 30th of the month is it this month for this cohort. So every, twice a year. Twice a year there's an a wind, an application window, so you can go on and apply.

They take all the, there's some standard questions that you answer and there's a bit of advice about how to answer them. And a group, I think probably about a hundred or so, I [00:26:00] think are selected through that. Out of everyone that applies, it's probably different now because now it's countrywide the latest cohort.

But and then at the same time, Public bodies are applying on their side with roles that they have to be matched up with people. So all of that's currently happening, all of those roles and the people are applying. And then once they're all in, people are selected. They go to a one day sort of workshop session.

It was online when I did it. I'm not sure they might be doing it in person again now. And then I was actually then the, like a year later on the other side of that process as well, selecting people. So it, it's quite yeah, I mean it's a well planned out process where you. There. I think in the morning everyone has to present something, and then in the afternoon there's [00:27:00] interviews and there's also like a group exercise where you put together with some other people.

And all of that's, explained and you can prepare and everything. It, the end goal is for them to be able to evaluate, would you fit with some particular roles that they

It is it can be a bit disheartening I think if you want to go through that and then you don't get matched up with the role.

I think that is,

Gwenai Jerrett: It doesn't mean that you weren't actually good necessarily. That's the thing. I had a friend who went through he's a, yeah, he went through and they said, we just couldn't find the right rule for you. It wasn't that we, you didn't do well. So that's a bit tricky.

Francis Moss: I applied in one round and then was actually given a role in the round afterwards matched up with the role so that can happen as well. But also I think it, it's even if you don't get matched up but you're really interested and [00:28:00] want to get in at that point, then there's also, and I'm sure public practice can also point the way.

There's lots of jobs that come up in different places. It's just a matter of finding them in the right place. And I think someone was mentioning before job descriptions. I think sometimes you've gotta take them with a bit of a pinch of salt. Actually, the best I found is always try and talk to the person who's Who's put out the role and hear it from them.

But you do have to similar to the public practice process, but more so if you're applying directly to local authority, you do have to just address the points that they've put out so they, they can give you, they can mark you against those because it's all about little marking matrix, matrixes, as unexciting as that sounds and it is unexciting to do, but that's the way it goes.

But I think that's the real advantage with public practice really is that [00:29:00] like me going to eing, and other people, it's about bringing, and I guess that's the whole goal of it is bringing in those more design skills into local authorities that are really lacking. I think it's also About I dunno what your experience has been, Grinnell on Matt, but like it's an opportunity to go in as well and see what you can bring.

And I think that's often people who bring in people from public practice put roles out through public practice are looking for people to bring something different that they don't already have in those organizations. But it can be challenging, I guess at the beginning when you do come in.

Stephen Drew: Yeah.

Matt Rudy: Yeah,

Stephen Drew: Carry on there. Yeah. Share your thoughts on that. I'd love to know what you think about what skills architects and urban designers can add, in to bring into the local government. Yeah,

Matt Rudy: Yeah. Sorry, I think I'm on a slight time delay to everyone else, but I'm not cutting everyone off am I? Yeah, I would [00:30:00] agree with Francis's point in that it, it is a real fantastic opportunity for local authorities as well to get a lot of of this kind of quite driven energetic private practice experience.

And I know that in the regeneration team that is incredibly valued. It's the ability to deliver an ability to deliver a place-based approach that works with communities, for communities. And I know, I think, just back on the kind of on the the process of it. Just briefly on, on Star, that was, setting out the situation, the task, the action.

You took the response and were, they actually run through that during the Francis mentioned, which was helpful to oh, I've never come across this before. This is really formulaic and dry. I've got so much more I want to talk about that I've got that I just, I haven't been able to fit into that really.

Rigid structure, but that structure's there because it has to be for the public sector to do they can be very comparative when they do applications like this. The other slight kind of challenge around when you're applying to public practices, you're not applying to a role [00:31:00] there, there's not one role that you've applied to.

You're applying as a cohort and you will be potentially given the option of a role that might be in an area or something you completely haven't thought of yet. And that's one of the big benefits is that kind of like surprise never thought about this place or that type of role or that job before.

Amazing, but also it might not be right for you. And you've gone through that journey. And it did happen for me when I applied that I was offered a role and it wasn't right for me. And so I was like, I'll get off the public practice bus now and I'll, I'm gonna go back to, to, to my work as an Architect.

And I was very fortunate that there was another opportunity for another placement that came up. A week later and I was like, yes, that sounds exactly the kind of the role I was after. And then just more broadly on, on kind of the skills that architects bring. I think we are we're definitely over time we developed the diplomacy and this kind of the ability to draw together and synthesize so many different competing interests from commercial pressures to planning pressures and internal design, pressures.

We, we try and synthesize [00:32:00] that to an ability to deliver something. And I think it's that spatial kind of way of that we work in diplomacy that is so helpful in the public sector environment. You're working across and can be quite often siloed big departments that, that really struggle to like align or communicate priorities.

But I think that a lot of the public practice architects that I've spoken to, they're able to just quite confidently parachute themselves across departments, cut through that and pull together and align to deliver for. For the communities that they're working in. So yeah, that'd probably be the key skills, your diplomacy and your ability to bring everyone on board with you.

Gwenai Jerrett: I think because Architecture, even though it's taught and probably the kind of people that architects are it's not just designing buildings, is it? So much more You aren't like someone who's studied business development where it's very sort of one track mind. It, we've always had to be thinking about lots of different things.

So I think [00:33:00] that's that, that makes it quite easy for us to go in and understand different ways of working. I also think that anyone who's been a Project Architect basically has amazing project management skills. I'm in a design like, so Art l ltc, I'm in the design team, but we are part of the development directorate and the way that we think is so different from our development colleagues.

I have to say we are a lot more organized. We are, we're better at project management. I think it's something that, yeah, anyone who's been a project Architect is gonna be good at And problem solving. And it's just a different type of problem solving and that's what Architecture is. The other thing I guess because my team maybe unlike E Lang, my team has had architects in it since 2012 or before 2012 even.

It's one of the first sort of public sector bodies that really started growing a team, hiring architects and [00:34:00] seeing the value in that. So it is a little bit different. I went into an established team, but there's still a value in bringing people in from fresh from the private sector because a lot of us in my team have now been in the public sector for, for 5, 10, 15 years, and, There's something, there's a freshness of getting someone who's, yeah.

Fresh from industry and kind of has been on the ground more recently than us. That, that kind of really helps in our team.

Stephen Drew: Oh, nice.

Francis Moss: And there has been, yeah, I mean you were in the first cohort, right? And so there is actually really interesting that we have a group now, like of public practice alumni from so many years now, and it is a great resource. Even the other people just in the previous cohort, that when you start in there, you are always gonna find someone who's doing something similar [00:35:00] somewhere else that, you can share with share briefs or share other things that you're doing.

It's just a really good network. And so that. I think that is like a real advantage there. And I even built on that as part of my public practice project. I'm not sure exactly what they do now, but I set up a industrious London officer network which is now almost my own little public practice network.

And we've got, I don't know if we have anyone from the L D C actually

Gwenai Jerrett: No, I don't know about it. Can you

Francis Moss: we've got the, we've got the G L A just everyone who's dealing with industrial in different places who wants to share, meet up, do like site visits and things. So taken the public practice model almost to to network networking there as well.

Gwenai Jerrett: We do have a couple of industrial projects, so yeah, maybe we need to [00:36:00] have a chat after,

Stephen Drew: There you go.

Gwenai Jerrett: On the networking side of things, if you finished. Otherwise, I yeah,

Francis Moss: Go

Stephen Drew: Jump.

Gwenai Jerrett: I think so. Yes. Building a network of people that you can go to. But also I hate networking. I've always hated networking. Even just the word makes me feel a bit sick.

But you do realize that like networking, the best kind of networking isn't, it's not an effort, it's just cuz you know people, and that's what's really good about public practice is that I can go to a G L A event and I know there's gonna be five people there who I already know that I can go and have a chat with versus when I was in practice.

You are so in practice doing your jobs barely you might, you speak to other architects, but that's not. It's, I'd go to events and I'd basically hide and now I can confidently go to events and have a chat with people. And yeah, I think that's super, that, that was really helpful for me as someone who isn't good at [00:37:00] just walking up to someone and introducing myself.

Stephen Drew: It's very interesting. While we've been talking, we've had a lovely comment from Sophia Cooney who says, very pleased to see the subject of this live as an intern at Urban Design and Learning and an Architecture student. Which training for the local authorities. I definitely didn't know before joining U D L that working for a local authority could be an option for me.

Now it's very interesting, isn't it? There might be a few people that are watching this by Fluke and thank you Sophia, for sharing your thoughts and insight in your story. But there's maybe a few Architectural assistants, architects, graduate urban designers, landscape architects, who knows what, who thought about the idea, but they're busy or they don't even know where to start or they, maybe they're not sure with their careers cuz we've all kind of moved laterally one way or another, even including myself.

Is there any tips or suggestions or thoughts for someone maybe who's at the start of that [00:38:00] journey that you would share that could be encouraging or useful information for them? Does anyone wanna jump in on that appointment?

Matt Rudy: Go on. I'll jump in.

Stephen Drew: Go on. Yes. Nice one, Matt.

Matt Rudy: I just like when, start looking at what's out there and because you've taken off the blinkers to like, what's the next Architectural step? But there's actually there's a whole. Breadth of the built environment that you can support? I'd just, I'd ask yourself again, why did you what is it that you wanted to do when you thought Architecture was for you?

Cause that might help shape the direction of the types of places you'll be applying to. And as Francis said before, go speak to people in those roles. Speak to the Public Practice alumni network. And I think it's all on the website that they're the most like friendly people in the world. You could contact any of them and they'd be more than happy to talk you through that kind of difference between their roles, what they were doing, and just find someone with the experience that looks similar to you, that is doing the job.

That [00:39:00] sounds amazing, but you've really got no idea that it existed until you come across it. I think that's actually a really helpful bit is just to flick through those those short bios on everyone and it covers such a wide gamut of different types of roles. And you'd be like, that's the role.

What's that called? Oh, it's a, some something special or Officer something team, I'll go and try and find and talk to them about, and they'll explode that kind of world for you. And also the things are called similar things across the public sector mean very different things. So regeneration teams does a job to a lot of local authority regeneration teams, which terms are large scale housing.

Ation team, the la it's Architecture acupuncture, looking at how we can unlock community value in existing buildings on the high streets and things like that. So it's a bit more kind of ninja regeneration rather than big scale new housing regeneration. So again there's this [00:40:00] terminology that's used to change.

It doesn't mean the same thing. So definitely try and dig into what

Francis Moss: They should put that in job descriptions. Ninja regeneration.

Gwenai Jerrett: The regen team in L D C doesn't do physical regeneration, so it's not really for architects, although bizarrely our sustainability team sits within it and they touch on it. It's, yeah, it's very confusing. And I do think actually what Matt said about the if you're what kind of jobs are there in the public sector, just reading the L D C ASSO Associates list and their job descriptions is really useful.

One of my, the people I work with, he's. We're design managers, but he really wants to go into sustainability and was just like, I don't know what kind of sustainability jobs exist in the public sector. So we just had a look through and there's quite a few different sustainability jobs that have come through public practice.

So that's a really good resource to try and figure out what it is. That [00:41:00] sounds interesting.

Stephen Drew: Very useful I think. It's great that these resources are there. I always look back and, there was a time when there wasn't public practice, isn't it? And it's like, how do you switch from one idea to the other? Could be. It is, it's like a very steep learning curve. And I'm glad that there's architects like yourself in the public sector because of this now,

Gwenai Jerrett: I have to say it though, I have a lot of respect for all the architects who made it over to the public sector before public practice, cuz I don't, how did they figure that out

Stephen Drew: My goodness.

Gwenai Jerrett: Yeah. They need to be given credit.

Stephen Drew: I It's true. Go on Matt.

Matt Rudy: Yeah, sorry. I was just gonna say, yeah, and also just as it grows public practice, it's definitely b blurring the edges and like those silos between the private sector and the public sector and the roles. And so when you had like maybe a friend in the planning who is a planner and then a friend who's an Architect and a friend who was working for kind of a developer, there's the bad kind of adversarial tropes of oh, slow planner [00:42:00] doesn't want anything to happen.

Or, oh, frivolous Architect, you just wanna spend all your time doing very expensive detailing, or, oh, greedy developer. I think the, this program has actually softened all of that, the reason that everyone is trying to do, to produce something good in the built environment sector. And by having every year another 40, 50, 60, 80 people like jumping across that boundary.

I think it's just really healthy for the built environment sector as a whole.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. Nice.

Gwenai Jerrett: Even if you don't know that you wanna work in the public sector to be like, this is, I didn't know necessarily when I went in and I just thought at least I'll have a year where I learn something else and it's just something to add to my CV. And it is, it is something extra to add to your CV even if you decide after that, to go back to Architecture.

You've got this, understanding of the planning and client side world now, which you didn't before.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. Fair enough. And for any of [00:43:00] our audio listeners who are listening back to this in the future or what have you, can check out public practice@www.publicpractice.org.uk. But now I know that I've luckily got you for an hour and we've fast approaching that mark. And what I was gonna say to the audience is that this would be last Chancellor Loons, if anyone did want to ask a quick question after.

Be a little bit quick as well. But obviously people can get in touch with you afterwards. Now I normally like to say that was a one-on-one. I always like to throw it back to the guests and say if there's any questions they would like to ask me, they can ask me and you can all still do that.

But equally, like you said, it was a big cohort and maybe some of you're familiar with whichever in public practice, but like we talked about earlier, Francis, with your industrial meta group within the group maybe there's connections to be had there, but we could open it up and say if there's any questions you have for me or maybe Francis, you have [00:44:00] a question for Matt or Grinnell, you have a question for Francis and so on.

Should we open the floor up for the next few minutes and any questions or thoughts? Go on. Francis you smacked your lips. So

Francis Moss: Yeah, I'm thinking. Yeah, no, I was just also interested in our social what what the setup is. Cuz I hadn't heard of it. Previously when I was in Architecture, but I haven't been in Architecture in a while.

Stephen Drew: Yeah, don't worry. It's it that the ARC social was born in the pandemic as well cause I was furloughed and for the first week I was drinking wine and stuff and I thought, oh, I'll quickly kill myself if I keep doing this or I better do something productive. I set up the Architecture Social, but it's a bit of a mishmash.

It's because it's a private company cuz I own it. And it's interesting because there's a traditional recruitment model to it. But then I enjoy not doing that cause I've done it for 10 years all the time. I shouldn't say that cause I've got a recruitment team now, but [00:45:00] I like podcasts and I like all, and there's all that information.

So in the private sector, if you did Architecture here, you're a part one's like how do you get a job? It's like you jump off the deep end. I had no clue. And when I was graduating, it was the global recession, so it was

Gwenai Jerrett: here.

Stephen Drew: How do I even get a job?

And recruitment consultants, they're not geared up to look for part ones or anything. They're chasing that elusive BIM, Manager and all that stuff. So when you're a part one, you're trying to get all this information and you don't really get much time, or people don't really talk about the reality.

It's like maybe you speak to a professor. Or a tutor and I had a tutor that would be like, yeah, what you wanna do is print out loads of portfolios and go around London and hand deliver them. And I'm just thinking that is not how you get a job in 2023. Maybe you're the lucky one, it's cost of living crisis.

We can't be printing loads of these portfolios. How do we do it? Is it okay to do an email with a CVM portfolio? How do you do that? Do we still do a cover letter [00:46:00] anymore, which is like controversial? I don't think cover letters are as important anymore, but people have a different opinion, right?

And so that's hopefully what the social is trying to solve. It's that

Francis Moss: I think it's, yeah, it's great. Sounds great to have a bit of a network I guess also for your architects, especially young architects. And it just made me also think, I guess of, like my experience with the working for a Star Architect and probably others experience working in Architecture as well, especially at the beginning of, probably being a bit too overworked and underpaid and I think, that is another side of the public sector and why many people do go to the public sector because of that job.

Being able to have more of a job balance and flexibility as well. So I just thought I'd throw that one in there as well.

Stephen Drew: Yeah, it's true, isn't it? And also, like you said, when you're a part one or whatever, you're applying and then you join a Architect practice, maybe that isn't what you [00:47:00] want to do or maybe you don't wanna do your part three and like different companies, public or private. And it's a totally different environment, isn't there?

And I tend to think as well, the other bit that no one talks about is that, when you join an Architectural practice, you get lumbered on a project in the office, which is in a random sector. And it's that's what you do now. Someone joins and they get put on a healthcare project.

Maybe they want to do something else. And so there's all these interesting things in our industry, which happened, but not really talked about, which I think is quite fun to unpack,

Gwenai Jerrett: Yeah, that's true. I yeah I'm also a recession graduate and it was incredibly hard to find a job and you just took what you found and yeah, two years later I was a stadium Architect and I, that was not by any purposeful plan and it was quite a fight to get out of it because, You were going to, I was going to rasi architects to try and get a job and they were saying what experience have you got that's relevant?

And, trying to [00:48:00] learn how to take what I had and turn it into the experience that they had when I was quite young and hadn't been taught how to do that was quite challenging.

Francis Moss: And I think the public sector is pretty bad at that as well, at actually knowing who they want.

They write these job descriptions because they're the ones that were on the shelf.

Gwenai Jerrett: Yeah. There's a lot.

Francis Moss: no one actually thinks about, who do we want? What do we actually want them to bring to this?

And I guess public, that's why public practice is particularly useful, I find, because otherwise people will look at you and say, oh, but you can only do that, design those things over there. And they're not thinking actually that's gonna help them in some way they hadn't thought about yet.

Stephen Drew: Very interesting. I do find that even in, in private companies as well, there'll be some buried job description somewhere that the office manager has in the system, which is remotely related to what the actual part two or Architect does. And that's what gets [00:49:00] advertised. And like you said you know how the job descriptions were even written puts me off half the time, we are looking for someone between five to 10 years experience with Revit and must have this, must have that.

And I'm like, oh my God, by the end of it, I can't even be bothered to apply anymore. Whereas it's good that, like you say, for public practice, you can learn and then there's like that,

Gwenai Jerrett: I think what's, oh, sorry.

Stephen Drew: Go on. No, please jump in.

Gwenai Jerrett: Changing at L D C is that we, on all of our recruitment now we focus a lot more on lived experience. And try to really ask ourselves like what qualifications do we and professional work do we really need? My team is quite specific. We do need designers, I think we used to say qualified architects and now we question do you really need a qualified Architect to do this?

Or could someone with the experie, like a part two who's had 10 years could do it just as well? Probably they could. So that there is a different in the public sector, the private sector I think [00:50:00] is gonna be a bit later to follow in this regard, but trying to change the focus of what we're asking for and make it less demanding from a,

Stephen Drew: Yeah. Very cool. I had one quick question that came in. And before we wind down and you let everyone know where they can contact you, which is Aisha says. Can I also ask if public practice has any part-time opportunities for those wanting to try out different roles during these studies? Maybe that's something that public practice hasn't done right yet.

My understanding is that it's about moving from one full-time role to another full-time role. Is that right?

Gwenai Jerrett: They, you can take on part-time roles because I know people have done that. My understanding of it before and I, this is five years ago now, is that it is more for it's not really, I think it's for people who are already professionals to move into the public sector rather than it wouldn't be like a part one, [00:51:00] Architectural, Assistant kind of thing, but I might be wrong and out of date with my information on that.

Stephen Drew: That's fine. We can check out after. But Aisha, do check out the website of public practice and you could probably reach out to the team there and they can let you know whether it's something that you apply directly to the public sector right now or it's something that maybe you return to in the future.

But I must say we are fastly approaching the hour and I've had a really good time. Now, there might be one or two people in the audience that, oh, the replay cause we're in the modern world right now that go, oh, I wanna learn, ask something about G L A or eing or L D C. So how does everyone get in contact with you?

Perhaps Matt? You can let us know where people can find yourself.

Matt Rudy: I'm not on in but other than yeah, my, my email, my work email which I can share if anyone wants to follow up with me happy to send that [00:52:00] out.

Stephen Drew: Thank you Matt, and thank you for persevering with us. When you go in through technical difficulties, however, we have managed to hear everything and it's, we've got away with it, but this is the modern world, isn't it? Every when someone's internet's gonna drop out. But Matt, we hear everything.

So I'm gonna give you a round of applause. What an absolute gentleman. I really appreciate it. Now, Francis at Eing council how do people get in touch with you if they wanna, I don't know, say hello or whatever?

Francis Moss: Yeah, probably easiest way is on LinkedIn, to that's just the best way. And also I think if there's anything specific through public practice, sometimes they get in touch with me about people with specific questions and things.

Stephen Drew: Brilliant. Francis, again, you know that Randall course appreciate what you're doing. And the Globetrotter in the bottom left Grinnell from Swanee, not Swanee South Wales, to Paris, to stadiums to the L D C, to different [00:53:00] stadiums, changing the stadiums. Thank you so much for being here and I really appreciate it, but where can people find you if they want to get in touch?

Gwenai Jerrett: LinkedIn is definitely gonna be the easiest and there's not a lot of G jars about, so

Stephen Drew: Yeah you know where people can find you.

Gwenai Jerrett: there's only the one of me, so yeah.

Stephen Drew: The one and only. But I really appreciate you all being here, and also thank you to you and the audience who, if you tuned in, I really appreciate it and everyone that's asked the question to drop the comment, it's been really awesome.

And you can check out this online and if it's the replay, do get in touch with everyone else. And the last thing I'm gonna mention before it's closed on the livestream, and I'll bring up the website really quickly again. Oh, that was just me. That's not very inclusive, isn't it? So press the wrong button, but here's the public practice website where you can find it@www.publicpractice.org.uk.

Now I'm gonna end the livestream. Now, if my lovely guest can stay on the stage for just [00:54:00] one second, that would be amazing. But I'm gonna end the live stream now. Thank you and the audience, have a lovely day and see you soon. But take care. Bye-bye.

Gwenai Jerrett: Bye.