Make space for collective leadership
JESSIE WILDE, DEPUTY PROJECT DIRECTOR, HOUSING FESTIVAL
I attended UK Construction Week in Birmingham this year. As always, it was a riot of colour, noise, people, and sales tactics. I saw a life-sized model of a rhino and a beautiful wicker sculpture as big as a garden shed. I drank coffee, ate popcorn, listened to an open mic singer, and secured for myself a rubber duck, dressed as a builder, complete with overalls, trowel, and the beginning of a brick wall firmly attached.
As a woman, I was in a minority but not as much as in previous years and, encouragingly, I was surrounded by students from schools and colleges, as well as the professionals and tradespeople I expected to see.
There were drones, robots, miniature models, and technology I didn’t understand, on a stand next to someone trying to sell me a cardboard tube to use instead of wooden bracing on internal walls.
What’s fascinating about these events is the jamboree nature, the festival style of the set up; a celebration of innovation, cutting edge ideas and progress. It’s an intoxicating swirl of progress, solutions, and award-winning, cutting-edge, market leaders.
However, in the midst of it all, it’s hard to find discussion about the challenges, about crises, about the sharp end of the failure to build which is resulting in thousands of families in temporary accommodation across the country and thousands more on housing waiting lists, sofa surfing, continuing to live with abusive partners, suffering with health challenges in mouldy accommodation, or living in crowded hostels.
One might argue it’s unfair to lay that on a conference like this because no one on those stalls really has the opportunity, influence or the responsibility to make a difference to those issues. But this is the problem in a nutshell.
We are currently operating in a system suffering from decades of under investment and de-prioritisation which has left us with a structural deficit in the supply of social housing. This affects the poorest and the most vulnerable in our societies and its effects are growing. This is a complex challenge, with no obvious solution, and there is no one person or organisation whose job it is to fix it.
At the Housing Festival, we regularly talk about the need for ‘collective leadership’. As it’s no one person or organisation’s responsibility to fix this challenge, there is a leadership void. One could argue it is the responsibility of national government, and perhaps it is, but until policy or funding changes drastically, there is a void to the tune of more than 100,000 families living in Temporary Accommodation and increasing each year.
Collective leadership is the only way through, and out of, the emergency we face. The complex nature of the multi-faceted challenge requires many experts and visionaries across disciplines, industries and areas of expertise, owning their part of the solution and collaborating with others in the sector. It requires being focused on and motivated by a common goal to overcome this crisis that is having detrimental impacts on our society at large. Moving forward requires leadership, only possible as a collective, to develop solutions, to drive the industry forward towards solutions that build flourishing cities, functioning communities, and housing for those most vulnerable in our societies.
These collectives need spaces to be built and cultivated, and we must work hard to ensure that we don’t miss any opportunity to do this within our business-as-usual. It is too easy to dismiss the problem we face as someone else’s problem. So instead, together lets push to drive the change we need to see.
