Tom Shore, Architects Benevolent Society

0011 - Tom Shore, Architects Benevolent Society
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Stephen Drew: [00:00:00] Hi, everybody. I am Stephen Drew, Head of Architecture at McDonnell and Company, and I am joined here by Tom Shaw. Tom, hi, how are you? Good, thanks, Drew. How's it going? All right. I'm living the COVID dream. So Tom, we know each other from the ABS, the Architectural Benevolence Society and the Mason Charity.

Perhaps, maybe, to people on LinkedIn listening to this for the first time who are not familiar with the charity and the awesome stuff you do, maybe you can introduce yourself and what you guys get up to.

Tom Shore: Yeah, sure. Yeah, I think, thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it. No problem.

Basically we're a charity that's, we've been around for a long time. So 170th year of being a charity in the UK in September, so anniversary. Um,

Not quite me personally as an institution. And yeah, and we our remit is that we help those in need within the profession. And their families. I think it's really important to highlight that [00:01:00] as well. So I'm really hoping that anyone listening, you are hoping that you've heard of us already, but if you haven't we we can step in, in like many different circumstances.

I guess it's set up originally before we had welfare and since then. We really bridge that gap where sometimes the government can't help, or you might be in, in a situation you hadn't planned for and might need support in many different ways. One way might be financial.

So we give loans and and financial support but also mental health support. or listen and talk and try our best to be there. And for the unexpected, we have a welfare team. So if you called us or rang us, you'd get free to them. And they are both two welfare officers both from background in kind of social work.

And a welfare assistant, right? And they give really good and helpful advice. And then support from that. We do have eligibility criteria. What we need to get the full support is having one year experience working within the architectural profession within the uk.

As soon as that is the case, you are completely eligible for our [00:02:00] support. I would say as well that we do have a student. offer because we really recognized how important it was to help students, especially in the way we can during their studies with mental health support. So if you are a student listening to this and you need or feel that you might need some kind of mental health support we are able to give you one year membership.

to Anxiety UK, which would give you or access to to email support, but also certain apps like the Headspace app and a few other kind of supports like that. Yeah, that's a kind of real, a quick summary but I'm sure we can talk more about what the ABS does along the way. And then, and also your role and how you've been really helpful to us and ambassadors like yourself in helping the charity.

I love it. I love it.

Stephen Drew: I was familiar with the ABS from pre COVID era. Remember getting the chicken soup, running that, running around London. Remember them happy days without the masks?

Tom Shore: I remember when we met humans. That was that was like a very long time ago, but yes. Yeah, I do. In the London based chicken run, I think [00:03:00] that, don't ask me where that came from, even our chief exec, who has been there, not since 170 years, but has been there about 19 years now, and he doesn't quite know the origin of why people dress in chickens, but yeah, great day, we're a fun run good bit of fundraising for us, and getting everyone together for the barbecue and the celebration afterwards, and yeah.

And yeah, the illusion of some kind of physical activity of running. Although there are some people who are very fast.

Stephen Drew: It's quite a lot of work. I think I'm always near the end. There's not much work. I'm always the one out of breath at the end, but I love it. And I think so for me, I didn't, I wasn't familiar.

What I love is that it's such a great cause. And there's been a few themes that happened. So two or three years ago, there was a big focus on mental health, which was a big deal because architecture can be, sometimes there's long hours. It can be a stressful role. Everyone studies for a long period of time.

And so that aspect [00:04:00] of what ABS does is absolutely fantastic. And then at the time the mental health was, it was so well, regarded and so successful. What's interesting, and especially now in COVID as in particular is, as you touched upon, there's a lot of wellbeing and even financial support that you guys do.

To architects, technologists, and people that work within architecture, which is amazing. So say now, even right now with redundancies or anything like that happening, COVID,

Tom Shore: that

Stephen Drew: part of what you do is you get involved. People can get in touch. They can talk about the stresses that are going on. They can talk about financial difficulties that they're in, or even family difficulties, and where possible, you'll try to help out.

Yeah, which is awesome.

Tom Shore: Yeah, we have what's quite unique, I'd say about, I've worked at a few different charities, but working at the ABS is that we have some partnerships with a lot of other different organizations and charities that will give you, the person, our beneficiaries, who might need support Access to Expert [00:05:00] Advice, so that might, that's about debt advice whether that's say, for instance, you might need specialist physical therapy advice, or shelter is another one of our partners, if you need homeless, or going through unsure about your housing situation yeah, we have access, Through our partnerships with these really expert organizations that can give us, because our back end, we have, yeah, like I said, two social workers who do know a lot.

And they know a lot about specifically helping people who come from, yeah, architecture or the wider architecture family. But then they can also go to these other great resources and really put people in touch with the right people and really. Help, and yeah since COVID we've it's been a really challenging time for us, like many charities, I would say.

It's definitely not a quiet time for you, Tom, right now. And I think I talked to other ambassadors my role I work with a lot of volunteer program, ambassador program, and they are like my eyes and ears a lot. within the field not coming from an architectural background myself.

But I know I can feel that there's a sense of worry even now coming up to the next couple of months, especially at the end of like the furlough scheme and and [00:06:00] redundancies in the foreground. I think of a lot of people's on the back of their head. I'd like to say, we have.

If you go to our website, we have resources about redundancy support and strategies and different useful links, but as well as that please get in contact with us. I'm sure there'll be somewhere in the link, there might be some like details that we could put there of our support. Yeah. But but yeah, we have ring us or email us and we'll try our best to help.

Yeah.

Stephen Drew: I love it. And so there's probably worth mentioning, because there's a few, there's a few aspects of the charity, which is awesome. So we're talking about if you're someone currently in need or you're in a bit of a stressful time, they can obviously get in touch. We'll put the links, which is absnet.

org. uk. Is that right Tom? That's our website. Yes. Yeah.

Tom Shore: Yeah,

Stephen Drew: we'll put that down below. People can get in touch that way. We'll make sure that we list all the services you do. The other thing is probably worth mentioning is the ambassador scheme. Yeah. Which is because I'm an [00:07:00] ambassador. It sounds quite nice.

Sounds quite royal, isn't it? Like I'm an ambassador. Sounds like royalty from South Wales and come a long way. But the ambassador scheme is probably, it's really interesting because The essence of this scheme, and this is my interpretation, is it's really nice to help out and what I like is that everyone can do as much or as little as they feel comfortable with, and it's a really nice scheme that so in essence, Being an ambassador for the ABS, I, for instance, I like to do this, promote the word and add that aspect, but there's so many different ambassadors that are involved to raise funds for the charity.

They raise awareness, they come up with ideas, they come up with events. You have the amazing people from Paulus, Thomas Edwards and, The bit I also like about the ambassador scheme is as well as helping out on the chicken run by holding a sign up, everyone runs around London, you get to meet other really smart, [00:08:00] intelligent architectural professionals who really want to help.

So how many ambassadors

Tom Shore: are there right

Stephen Drew: now? Is it like over

Tom Shore: 70 now? I've been yeah, I've been growing for strength and strength. I use, to us, you really are royalty. I think We my predecessor, Mark, was the one who first started the program about, I think it's about three and a half years ago, four years ago now and I've taken over since but at the beginning, we just, it was like a, yeah, there was like, we had a, we'd do like fundraising or like initiatives, and like we had a group of people who would just naturally help us I think Mark really saw that, oh let's Make a thing of this and actually make try support these people better.

And that's what it grew out of originally. And yeah, now it's turned into this really great program of a regional network of yeah, over 70 people who all are drawn together by one of helping the ABS and helping the community. Help other architects and other architectural technologists and landscape architects and their families throughout the UK.

So yeah, as you said, they do a lot of fundraising for us and it's really important in the moment, really helps us as we are, giving out. [00:09:00] More and more support. So that help is really needed. But more than that, it started really about raising awareness. I think since I even come to the role, I think it's we definitely, I do these talks and I go to universities and I go to practices and then we talk about what kind of way I'm speaking to you now about what the ABS is.

And I think before about three years ago, you'd go there and maybe one person might've heard of you or nobody's really heard of you or you have a couple, but now it's. People are, it feels like people know more about us and that is I would say completely down to Ambassadors and going out to we're a small charity and so none of us work in architecture, but Ambassadors are all in that world going to different regional meetings talking about us and when it's appropriate, you might do a presentation and they might be like, oh, by the way, if you ever need support, there's this charity they help.

Our profession which is really useful for us because otherwise, how are people going to know? And yeah, so no, I have nothing, but I'm going to be biased. It's my job to manage the program, but they are the best [00:10:00] thing I think about the charity and then people like yourself and really go above and beyond to really help and it's really, Quite rewarding to see that and I'm very appreciative.

So thank you.

Stephen Drew: This is what I was going at. So to anyone in theory can be an ambassador comes down to them and that's it. And that's it. Would be interesting to see if anyone reaches out after this. Anyone who's thinking to get involved as an ambassador. I really enjoy it. So even this year we all went to again, this is just before coronavirus kicked in.

Once a day, once a year, where everyone socializes, they go together, we talk about the charity, we talk about what everyone's been up to, and it's a fun day, you have a few cheeky nibbles, you have a little drink, and we even went up to the bar, didn't we? Because we were lucky enough to go in, we were in Squire's and Partners amazing office, and then at the top, they got that cool you can have that drink on the balcony of the members club.

Again, it was beautiful, it was really nice. Yeah. And there's stuff like this that wouldn't happen if you don't put yourself out there and I guess that's one of the [00:11:00] things that I really like about the charity is because I, of course, I wanted to get involved and I was a part too, and it was sometimes the long hours, but can be really stressful and I was not aware of this charity before so spreading awareness is great but actually being involved it's fun and the reason I say that is because I've done a few things before at Manchester University if you're listening I absolutely Love the university.

And I wasn't a very good social coordinator at the time because I was a student. I was having fun, I was doing my work, and I was not the best coordinator. So I remember when I was becoming an ambassador and I met Mark and Mark if you've not met Mark yet he's such a funny, he's a good character.

Yeah. And I remember going, oh no. Oh or if I commit to being an ambassador and I don't live up to the potential, that this is what's awesome about it. Everyone contributes in their own weird and wonderful way. And I and like the way we're doing this podcast now is organically popped up.

And to me, it's [00:12:00] fun. Hey, we're spreading awareness of this charity. And the point is it changes people's lives. And what I like is that you've got All different types of amazing charities. It's really nice that there is a charity focus for people who work within the architectural profession. And I like that.

And it's really great to hear the success stories. It's really great to hear from people that maybe ring up and It can vary from life changing support when, for instance, an accident happens in the family and you guys get involved and really help out. Or it can be even a little thing of someone's stress, and when they have anxiety.

Because right now it's still It's not a fun situation. We all have a joke that we're all doing Zoom in our trousers. We have no pairs of trousers right now. We're all we're having a giggle, but actually coronavirus is really stressful. I found it quite stressful because when [00:13:00] the architectural market crashed at first, In March or April, I was on furlough and it's stuff like having you guys there or a point to call

Tom Shore: makes

Stephen Drew: a big difference.

Tom Shore: Yeah, just over, over the COVID period. So we've given out since the start of COVID, I think we've given over 370, 000 75, 000 pounds of financial support. And that's really going a long way towards that, that month where you, Can't get onto the unemployment benefit and you need to pay your rent or yeah, just bridging the gap.

A lot of it can be just, short term support for a couple of months while you can't meet the mortgage for the, and we try to work out solutions to help and really Try to stop it before everyone, before it all comes falling down and really try to be there and support.

If anyone's listening, yeah, I would really encourage you to reach out to us and at least have a conversation. And we can try and, yeah give some form of support. Yeah yeah, no, yeah,

Stephen Drew: I love it. I think it's such a great course in that way. And what's interesting, so even for you, Tom, you've seen the [00:14:00] massive change as well.

So back in March before member of the world was good in February, right? And then March came and what's been interesting is that, so the architectural benevolence side, you always have such a good calendar of events, right? And to chicken run. We were all looking forward to it, and we had to, we all had to adapt, and you guys had to adapt as well, isn't it?

Because part of it is that you're raising awareness, and you're raising funds for charity to give back

Tom Shore: to

Stephen Drew: people. It all goes back to people. The thing is, though, if we're all, we were all in lockdown, so it's been quite a stressful time for you guys as well, isn't it? And some good stuff's come out of it, and there's been a lot of good stuff.

Tom Shore: A lot of adapting. I've done a lot of online events, which has been it's been interesting. I've embraced it now, but yeah, definitely at the beginning, it was a strange concept. We ended up doing, instead of the chicken run, I think we did the cooped up chicken run, which I think online, we got a really good reception and people enjoyed it.

It was like a lot of indoor physical activities, which maybe not is everybody's cup of tea, but Yeah, it [00:15:00] was fun. And it was, a lot of like silly kind of content on Twitter or on, on social media. Which was fun and really helped us again, raise awareness. Cause you, people would see the, like why is someone doing a hundred star jumps or press ups or something?

Why are they putting a video of that up on online? And they see what it's for and then see that the money's going towards. And then, it really helps us. But we've also done, we did an online And of course, I'm sure like everyone's sick to death for them, but there was, there were some really great speakers.

We had Jane Duncan came and Adam White from the Landscape Institute, the former president, and Eddie Weir, who's the CIAT president as well. So really got behind us and it was a very fun evening. So we actually want to do that again near the end of the year. Try to do another kind of Christmas y themed quiz, depending, where we are at, but that's on the cards.

And then, and the next one, actually, the big is a drawing competition. So it's called Time to Sketch. It's happening next month 24th of September. And it's yeah, asking People to sign up and take an hour out of their day to do a drawing you're given a select amount of time to complete it by and [00:16:00] then you'll submit it to us.

And then we have a judge panel who will judge and see who's the winner is. And we normally make a kind of sketchbook out of it, like coloring and book. Which will give us the winners, and then, yeah, it should be selected.

Stephen Drew: I might regret going down, Tom. Are you sure you want my sketch?

Are you sure?

Tom Shore: I'm sure it'll be beautiful. I can't wait. Can't wait for it.

Stephen Drew: I think you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna have it in the book, and you're gonna

Tom Shore: shrink it down to 10%. We're in the last page. You have to make the top 20 to get into the sketch, I think. Oh, really? Yeah.

Stephen Drew: I believe in you. And they can have the top one and then I can be in like, Yeah,

Tom Shore: no, it was really good last year.

It was our first year of doing it. So I think it's actually really good one for a lockdown period where you inside anyway get your family involved if they're, if they want to up for a bit of a draw. And then of course all the proceeds go towards supporting our work.

So what's not to love really, but yeah, I love it. Are you

Stephen Drew: going to be doing a sketch?

Tom Shore: I think I've got to be [00:17:00] impartial. I think I'm going to be doing the the running behind the scenes. It's a good, yeah.

I might do a promo one to try and get it, get them going, but like I did in the for the coop dot run, but I don't, yeah, I won't actually partake. I don't

Stephen Drew: think. You could do like a section for the best ambassador. The sketch as well. Yeah, definitely. I love it. So for anyone listening again, so if you are currently in a bit of a stressful situation or you know anyone in a stressful situation, then definitely do get in touch with the ABS and also spreading awareness is really helpful.

And if you want to get involved, the Ambassador Scheme is open to everyone. That's correct, right? Yeah,

Tom Shore: it is. I think Just because it's just me who manages it. I do 70 is a lot of people and I try really to put my heart into following and staying up to date with everybody. So I am still looking for people, but more in key regions.

Basically I have a lot of people in [00:18:00] London. I'm still would love to hear from you. I'm definitely not turning anyone away, but I just I have London very represented by people. But. Other regions especially like the Southeast West Midlands or up North, going up further North yeah, but still, I'd love to hear from you, and I try my best if not, if, and there's other ways to help the charity too, there's Ambassador program's a bit more formal and a bit more of a commitment.

Just because we ask although I am very like Drew said, there's some flexibility and people help in different ways, it, we still ask like a regular keep in date, have conversations with me every now and then, and maybe do a bit of fundraising and all that kind of stuff but if you're we have other people who just kind of chip in for certain events and like they're, might be very into the chicken run, for instance they come and help us as a marshal on the day or other ways to but yeah, no, please reach out.

My, my email is Tom. dot shore s h o r e at a b s net dot org dot uk but you can find it on our website which i'm sure there'll be a link for as well but yeah amazing and

Stephen Drew: the important questions do we have a welsh ambassador

Tom Shore: we have [00:19:00] a few yeah we've got we have a few we've got no we've got i wish i'd just say their names but yeah no we do yeah we've got mainly around cardiff so it'd be good to get some Going further, further North Wales.

I'd like to get some representation up there. But yeah, no, we've got I've got four Welsh ambassadors, I think and I'm technically

Stephen Drew: Welsh, even though I'm, I've been in London for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. No, definitely. Four and a bit Welsh ambassadors. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I love it. I love it.

So that's really helpful. And really good to give a bit of an insight to everyone. So anyone listening, Architectural Benevolent Society, amazing charity. Definitely check them out on the website, which is what Tom? It's abs net,

Tom Shore: hold up. Sorry. I always I don't want to give the wrong one. Yeah, it's absnet.

org. uk. So

Stephen Drew: absnet. [00:20:00] org. uk. It's abs. If only were

Tom Shore: there

Stephen Drew: two

Tom Shore: years, I should probably have that one.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. You have it down. Architects Benevolent Society. Yeah. Let's have a look.

Tom Shore: Architects Benevolent Society. Great. And there's some great resources there as well. And as well as a lot of the, there's some stories of a lot of people we've helped give you like a bigger picture of Kind of the scope in support as well.

There's a new website coming soon as well, isn't there? There is, we're in the process of it does need a little bit of an update. Yeah, we that will come soon but should be the same address. But yeah we'll try and update it and make it better.

Stephen Drew: Oh, you can put my you can put my sketch on the website.

I give you full permission for that. Oh, But then that might be a bit of a downgrade, not an upgrade, right?

Tom Shore: I don't know. I have all faith in you, Drew, that you're The artist inside you will will impress, but yeah. You'll have to, you'll

Stephen Drew: have to look hard for that, but in the meantime, while you're looking for the [00:21:00] artist in me, check out the Architects Benevolent Society.

Thank you so much, Tom, for having

Tom Shore: me. Yeah, I really appreciate it, Drew. Yeah, no, thank you.

Stephen Drew: Yeah, I've had a lot of fun with this and we'll go back to being on the online digital COVID world. If you're stressed out or you want to get involved with the Architects Benevolent Society, check them out online. I will put a link there or you can reach Tom even on LinkedIn as well.

Tom Shore: Thank you so much, Tom. Thank you. All right, bye bye.