To listen to the podcast: https://soundcloud.com/momentum-transport/s2-4-conversations-in-momentum-debbie-akehurst-and-katie-mulkowsky-cda
Or read below:
Mailys Garden:
Hi everyone. Welcome to Conversations in Momentum, brought to you by the teams at Momentum Transport Consultancy and Momentum Transport Canada. I’m Mailys Garden.
Joe Tang :
And I’m Joe Tang. So Mailys it was great to see you down in London last week from our Edinburgh office. And I was at our London offices in Clerkenwell, you probably saw some of the very exciting preparations underway for Clerkenwell Design Week, which has just kicked off as we start today’s podcast recording.
Mailys Garden:
Absolutely Joe. Having been based in Momentum’s office for three years and then in Clerkenwell for seven years before moving up to Edinburgh, it always amazes me that Clerkenwell is such a creative hub. It’s great to be part of it, and every time I come down, I just absolutely love just to walk around and just being amazed at the amazing creativity and the buildings within the buildings and the displays. It’s just a wonder for the eye and the soul.
Joe Tang :
Oh, it absolutely is. And we’ll actually be touching upon this excellent hub during today’s podcast, and we have the perfect guest with us to do just that. So first off, we’re delighted to welcome Debbie Akehurst to our podcast. Debbie is the Chief Executive at the Central District Alliance, the Business Improvement District or BID for short, comprising the Holburn, Clerkendwell, Farringdon, Bloomsbury, and St. Giles areas of London. So Debbie, welcome to Conversations In Momentum, and thank you so much for joining us today.
I guess it’s a busy time for you with Clerkenwell Design Week in full swing?
Debbie Akehurst:
Yeah, thank you. It’s great to be here as well. Yeah, Clerkenwell Design Week, CDA, we sponsor it every year. We’ve done for quite a long time, even before I joined the BID, but also we support things like Bloomsbury Festival as well, and that feeds into that whole… we look at the area as five villages, so it’s really important for us to recognise the uniqueness of those five villages. So yeah, the team will be going down and having a look at what’s going on with Clerkenwell Design Week.
Joe Tang :
That sounds excellent.
Mailys Garden:
Absolutely brilliant to be hearing about those different initiatives and especially celebrating the urban fabric and what happens in between the buildings. So, I am really glad to have you with us today, Debbie. And we’re also welcoming a second guest today. A big Momentum hello to Katie Mulkowsky, who’s a consultant within our planning team. And Katie’s been working as an urban planner in both London and New York on climate forward projects that also spearhead community development, and currently works closely with Debbie and the team at the Central District Alliance.
Katie Mulkowsky:
Hello. Thank you so much for having me.
Joe Tang :
Oh, thank you for joining us. So Debbie and Katie, to kick things off, we always begin by asking our guests to share a transport related story or highlight from their careers. Now Debbie, as chief executive of CDA, obviously your role covers a lot more than transport, but equally I’m sure, good transport and urban design contributes significantly to the work that you do. So would you have a notable transport highlight that you’d be happy to share with us?
Debbie Akehurst:
Ooh, I’ve been wracking my brains, and I was saying to Katie earlier, I’ve been commuting now into London for work for almost 17 years, so you would think that I’ve got lots of funny stories, but can’t actually think of any. I did help a very distraught young lady one day who’s boyfriend was being very, very nasty to her on the train, so I rescued her with my tissues and told her that he wasn’t worth it. So, I don’t know if that meets, but yeah, long time commuting and using the rail system, which I was again said to Katie earlier, funnily enough I think the trains are probably worse now than they were when I started commuting 17 years ago. Question mark.
Joe Tang :
Yeah, no, I like the personal touch to that as well, that sort of community aspect. The local commute, it’s always quite a nice one.
Debbie Akehurst:
Well, I think it is. And again, going back to commuting and transport, and I was saying earlier with our reliance on technology now, there’s no conversation now on trains, everybody is on their tablets or they’re on their phones. Occasionally you see people reading, but there is literally no conversation on transport now.
Joe Tang :
Katie, can we pass the baton on to you then? Do you have a noticeable transport highlight from your end that you’d be happy to share with us?
Katie Mulkowsky:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. It’s such a good question. Was also reflecting on this with Debbie earlier and was saying that for me, moving to London from New York where I never really felt comfortable cycling on a regular basis or integrating it into my daily routine, such a big transport highlight for me was gaining that cycle confidence and integrating it into my life here. And funnily enough, I think it was a strange side effect of the pandemic, in central London during COVID, all the streets were really eerily empty. And I have these memories of cycling through Central, even going down the super highway, which is normally so busy, or seeing the London Eye with some of my housemates and almost having this dystopic streetscape to ourselves. And I guess it’s a funny memory, and not to just bring that immediately back into work, but obviously those things in that time were prompted by something very unfortunate.
But at the same time, there were elements of that that really a highlight why a lot of us do the work that we do. Having those emptier streets that we’re moving away from a car-centred experience and allowing people to walk or in common and enjoy each other. Whether it was by foot or by bicycle, not only made the experience more pleasant for people who already did that, but got more people out onto the streets and onto the roads, myself included. So it was, yeah, those strange memories come from an interesting time I think for us to think back to, but have also maybe changed the way we think about how we relate to the streets and each other, possibly even members of the community on the train feeling more of an inclination to lend a hand.
Debbie Akehurst:
Absolutely.
Katie Mulkowsky:
Yep.
Mailys Garden:
This is really interesting. Thank you, Katie. I really like that story because it really shows how our experience of cities, of public spaces can be completely turned on their heads depending on what circumstances we see them in. And certainly I can relate to this, having had a child two years ago and suddenly experiencing the city in a completely different way. And it was the same city and you just suddenly because you’re pushing a pram, you just see things completely differently. And COVID, I think did that to us as well, that suddenly we’re like, “Oh my goodness, it could be so much quieter.” That there could be so many good things that could come if we didn’t have as much traffic on our streets. So thank you very much for sharing this.
I’ll bring us back to our questions. And Debbie, we would really like to ask you about Central District Alliance, what you do, what’s your role, and perhaps the more generally the roles of business improvement districts. That would be really helpful if you could set this out for us.
Debbie Akehurst:
Yeah, of course. I think what’s really important is that BIDs are a real catalyst for change. And I think again, if you probably stopped Joe Blogs on the street and asked him what a business improvement district was, I don’t think many people would know. And I think in terms of BID areas, you’re not going to know whether you’re in maybe the Central District Alliance footprint or you’re in Fitzrovia footprint, so in terms of how we brand our areas I suppose. But BIDs, especially now, and I think again, before COVID but certainly post COVID as well, plays such an important role in terms of London and London’s economy. Not just London, because obviously there’s BIDs across the country, but there’s 70, I think, currently in London. And we can help with things like place making with public realm, as Katie was saying earlier about cycling. And I think one of the things that COVID has shown is the real importance of outside space. So we as a business improvement district are doing a lot of work that Katie is leading on with the team around how we implement the outside space, working very, very closely with both of our boroughs, both Camden and Islington boroughs.
So we do a lot around that place making. But again, it’s also about showcasing the area. So working very, very closely with our businesses so that we can help them in terms of where they do business. Certainly for Central District Alliance, we sit between the city and the West End. So what we want to make sure is that people don’t just see our area as an area to pass through to get somewhere, that actually it’s very much around, “Well, what can I do in this area?” So we have the British Museum as an example, who get in the region of six and a half million visitors a year. But what we want is those six and a half million visitors to stay in the area, go to some really nice restaurants, cafes, bars, et cetera, and actually see some of the other great cultural and architectural interests that we have in the footprint. And again, that helps feeds that whole SME ecosystem, that helps support those bigger global and corporate businesses that we have in the area.
But then on the other side, we also, our businesses operate within a community, so we do a lot of community outreach as well through our ESG programme, which I know we’re going to talk about in a bit more detail later. But I think overall BIDs are, like I said earlier, they are a real good force for change. And we act as brokers, so we’re very good at bringing the private, public and voluntary sector together to work collaboratively because we all operate in the same area.
But also, it’s really important that we work with other BIDs as well within the Camden and Islington footprint. So Old Street and Angel BID on the Islington side, Fleet Street Quarter, Fitzrovia, this is going to challenge me now remembering them all. On the Camden side, so on Camden, Euston Town. So it’s very important that we all work together because I think some of the big issues that we all have and that we go to the councils with are the same, in terms of greening, planting, environmental things. So it’s really important that we all work as a collective.
Joe Tang :
No, absolutely. And I guess that makes it so key given that whole community aspect to it, in that collaboration to help generate those improvements and change in the areas that we’re involved in.
Katie Mulkowsky:
Yeah, I think that’s a really good point, Joe. We have a few projects happening right now on the public realm side that’s so demonstrate the potential of the BID model, particularly the CDA. Almost acting as a translator between many different stakeholders, who obviously have different levels of engagement with the local area, whether they’re workers or residents, whether they’re members of the council or the business community. I guess the BID model also… it’s funny to think about how it’s evolved from its origins in North America. So I think traditionally this kind of Canadian model that then became exported to the US, and then obviously found its origins here, I think the first BID here was in Kingston, originated with the conception of a BID being a high street. And something that I really like about the way that we’ve articulated the strategic spatial vision for the BID here, is moving away from just that high street model and considering what it means to look at a place in context. Particularly with all of those complicated stakeholder networks and partnership opportunities that you just mentioned, Debbie, I think it’s really powerful.
And moving away from just thinking about a high street, part of what we consider connecting people now in these discussions of climate and active travel, are green links and low pollution links, grounding common spaces like parks. And not just thinking about those places where people might gather to have coffees and conversations and forum business or personal networks, but how they get there to begin with and whether there are alternatives to maybe highly trafficked roads, and how the way that we move through these places continues to foster those relationships.
I guess for one concrete example, we’re working with Islington Council around a garden just behind Farringdon station right now. It’s called St. John’s Garden, and this is a project which has basically 50/50 CDA and Islington council contribution, but has also been informed by really, really deep collaboration with the local residence network. They’re called Friends of St. John’s Garden. And equally, a lot of the ideas that we got for what might shape the park and what people might want to see came from just walking around and knocking on doors and talking to people, which is a very soft form of stakeholder engagement that I guess from a planning point of view can really have so much practical power. So yeah, that BID model, us navigating between different stakeholders also is informed by the way that we ourselves navigate the space, which can be a really powerful thing when it comes to place making and place shaping.
Debbie Akehurst:
Yeah, I think that’s really important because I think, as I said earlier, I think we have to be mindful that we are businesses within a community, and we have quite a large residential community and things like parks, our communal parks, there’s not very many have private gardens. So that outside green space is very important. And I think the worst thing you can do is for people to feel like they’re having things done to them rather than being part of the conversation. So that stakeholder engagement in particularly at that residential level is so important, that Katie and the team do a fantastic job doing that. It’s not just about business because it’s about the community in which we operate, but obviously as a BID we have to make sure that our businesses are looked after as well as part of that.
Katie Mulkowsky:
And yeah, often there’s this interesting question of whose community, whose streets, are being talked about and of course is the people using that space every single day. Workers and residents and people at different levels of engagement in a space, all form that because they have their own relationships to the streets and places we’re talking about.
Debbie Akehurst:
Yeah. Because High Holborn as an example, is their high street, going back to talking about high streets, but that is their high street. So that’s where their local shops are and their local cafes and their local bars are.
Katie Mulkowsky:
Mm.
Mailys Garden:
This really reminds me of whatever I was studying at a university, and when we were talking about different scales of action and that strategic elements of the businesses coming together to talk to councils about that collaboration element, down to walking the streets with the residents to look at sometimes small scale improvements that can have a massive impact for them. And that’s really great to hear that business improvement districts can have such a positive impact at those different scales.
Joe Tang :
And funnily enough, that discussion on the background of the BIDs almost segues me quite nicely into the next question I was going to ask on this, which was touching upon the CDA’s mission itself. So the mission encompasses championing sustainability, transformative destination strategies, innovative business solutions and the creation of exceptional public spaces. Now that’s an exceptional set of mission goals and I think it’s fair to say that on the projects we work on, we can see how these elements can dovetail and interact together to bring huge benefits to local communities and groups that you’ve touched upon there. You’ve briefly mentioned projects that CDA are working on at the moment. I was just wondering if you’d be happy to talk us through a few of those in a bit more detail and specifically how those link into the CDA a mission?
Debbie Akehurst:
Yes, certainly. I think one of the biggest that we’ve been working on in partnership with Camden, is Princess Circus, which hopefully you may have heard of. So it’s a around near Shaftesbury Theatre, and they’ve also been working on the theatre as well. We’re just about… fingers crossed, that now should all be completed by the end of this month or early June. And as an example, it’s been a long process and a long project and it’s had its difficulties as all of these things do, but it’s going to make such a difference, I think, to that area in particular. And again, not just for businesses, but also local people as well. So it’s really transformed the public realm across there. And as I say, it will be… there’s greening we’ve talked about earlier, but the importance of that space for mental health and wellbeing for people.
So it will allow people to dwell and it will allow people to get out of their offices, get away from their desks for a little while. And we put on a whole range of summer activities, which does just that. So we have deck chairs that we put out and we do picnic in the parks and all of this type of thing as well. And that’s really to encourage people, but also visitors to the area as well because obviously we’ve got with Farringdon station, just coming out to its first year anniversary and Farringdon being very much heralded as the new front door of London. And we’re lucky that we have two Elizabeth line stations with Tottenham Court Road too. In terms of footfall, we’re seeing a lot more footfall coming through those areas, in particular Tottenham Court Road and also the main station of Farringdon. So there will be a lot more people coming into the area, a lot more businesses moving into the area. So having really good public realm and places where people can meet and dwell are going to be so important.
Katie, I don’t know if you want to chip in with some of the other bits you’ve been working on.
Katie Mulkowsky:
Absolutely. Thanks, Debbie. Yeah, so I’m actually excited that you raised Princess Circus because it’s one of the interventions that we’ll be highlighting at the London Festival of Architecture this summer, alongside the London Borough of Camden, LDA, contractors idverde. And we’ll similarly be highlighting public realm improvements at Clerkenwell Green. I think going back to that anecdote at the beginning where I talked about improving the pedestrian and cyclist experience, that is so at the heart of what CDA’s funding and contributions to that scheme have been trying to motivate in the area. So we’ll be really excited to walk members of the public through that as well during the London Festival of Architecture.
And I think going back as well to the conversation around the interplay between public realm and the retail experience, this is where Red Lion Street equally becomes an exciting project for us to highlight. And maybe Joe, you can provide some insights here as well from your original experience with CDA’s Place Plan. But it was so exciting to see phase one delivered alongside the London Borough of Camden and have this historic Market street, which has always contained a really local collections of shops and restaurants, be brought into a contemporary sense of public realm with the widening of the footway, the intervention of a dedicated cycle lane, additional street trees. And there are new planting opportunities that we’re now exploring in phase two. But I guess in this broader conversation about what brings people together and what improves the retail footfall experience, it highlights the potential of CDA acting as this external funding body through deep engagement with the council and community stakeholders to accomplish these really powerful things on public land. And the benefits of that then feed right back to local businesses in the network, specifically because Red Lion Street itself is maybe one of the only places in the Holborn area that still has such a local collection of shops and restaurants.
Debbie Akehurst:
Yeah, absolutely. Yes.
Katie Mulkowsky:
You’re not yet seeing Prets and Costa Coffees down that street. So I think all of those schemes together really highlight the diverse array of projects that we’re involved in.
Back on the Clerkenwell side, were also exploring the delivery of a new pocket park alongside Islington and a variety of community stakeholders. This has been facilitated through deep engagement. We had a co-design workshop where residents and members of the business community came and were able to articulate their vision for the use of the space. And we learn things from that as every project goes on too, the sense of connection people have to the streets and to the neighbourhoods informs exactly how this work should be approached, which can then bring the funding back to the street level and to the neighbourhood level as well.
Debbie Akehurst:
Yeah, the more we can identify areas across both Camden and Islington to do that, I think it’s really important. And it’s also things about safety, just making sure that the streets are also safe. So we do have a security team and they patrol between, I think it’s eight o’clock and 11 o’clock at night. We’re also looking at lighting, aren’t we, as well to see how we can enhance lighting of an evening. And we work very closely, again, with Camden and Islington on the Women’s Night Safety Charter. And again, I think that is such an important part of public realm as well, is to make sure that actually people feel safe.
Mailys Garden:
Absolutely. And thank you for bringing that up actually, because it’s brilliant to hear and to add to my list of places to visit next time I’m down, in terms of the sort of physical improvements that are being made to the public realm. But then it’s all about how people are going to enjoy them and how they’re going to feel that enjoyment and that safety when they are there at different times of the day. So I think those two just can’t go without each other, can they? So thank you for setting this out.
As transport consultants, obviously we live and breathe transport. So it’s really interesting to hear from you, Debbie, that good transport plays such an important part in achieving those broader aims. And also it impacts not just road safety, people safety, congestion, but also public realm and retail experience. And of course, another important part of what you do is around ESG. So there are some ambitious targets to work towards. And you spoke at a CDA event recently on how important it is to work as a collective to make an impact on the social, economic and environmental sustainability. Is this something you could tell us more about please?
Debbie Akehurst:
Yeah, certainly. It’s one of the things we’re really passionate about at the BID. And going back a few years, when I first came in as chief exec, it was very much around… There was quite a lot happening around the environmental side and we have roof gardens and bees, but equally we were really, really keen to bring greening down to eye level. Because, I’ve worked in London a long time, but usually in the city and around Westminster, Victoria. So I hadn’t come over this way very much at all, but it really about how grey the area was. No planting as such and not many trees. So I’m really glad that we have enhanced that area in terms of tree planting, especially I love trees and we need more trees. But what we really want to enhance again, is the social part of ESG.
And again, that’s really important I think, in terms of having vibrant economy. We have big residential population, we have businesses that are having issues with recruitment in particularly around hospitality as an example. So we really felt that we need to do something for businesses to have access to that local community, so that they could actually use people on your doorstep. There’s lots of talent out there and let’s see what we can do to bring those in. So that’s where we started down the road of… So we launched two of the Mayor’s Skills Academies this year, one in digital because we have a digital cluster now, which is really exciting. We have the likes of Google and LinkedIn and Snapchat, et cetera. So big global companies, but also every single business uses tech. And we’re looking at doing a breakfast later on in the year about AI and the importance of AI in business. So watch out for that.
But also hospitality as well, so we have some brilliant hotels in the footprint such as the Rosewood and the Kimpton Fitzroy, just as two examples. Again, real problems, so that’s why we chose those two academies. And there’s lots of other academies as well, but those are the two that we chose. And I’m not going to tell you how many years ago, but I worked with the GLA on setting up the first construction academy programme, but that was a long, long time ago, but these are built on that model. And we’re working with Capital City College Group and it’s going really, really well. We’re really excited.
And we also have lots of charities in the area, so we financially support both Islington and Camden Giving. We have our own programme as well called ActionFunder, where we gift out low level grants of about 3000 pounds, and we do that twice a year I think. And that’s really to reach those grassroots level charities, it could be a local football team that’s using football as a form of engagement for young people that might need a new football kit. So we’re doing it at various levels in terms of supporting and doing what we can for that local community. And we’ve had, I think to date about 650 individuals go through the academies already this year. So yeah, anything we do, I think that we can do to help to bring people together, both Camden and Islington employment brokerage services, our businesses and colleges and young people. We know that young people, and women in particular, were most hit by COVID.
We’ve recently done a piece of work called Unbiased, which was a 12-month piece of research on inequalities that women still face in the workplace. So that’s all going to be formally launched soon. So we’ll make sure you get a copy of the report. But really exciting piece of work. And although we’ve made some strides in those areas, women still face those inequalities. Childcare was one of the top things that came out from those priorities. Women still, in effect, work two months a year free to their male equivalents for doing the same job. So it’s things that we all know, but it was really good to have it all in the same piece of research.
Katie Mulkowsky:
Mm. Debbie, I think that’s so great. And just to echo that, through our public realm work, we often see the ways that women become excluded physically from the design of our shared spaces. And this is really something that we’re trying to bring into the ethos of projects like the one that I mentioned behind Farringdon station at St. John’s Garden. We’ve been drawing from the work of groups like Make Space for Girls, which do a lot of deep community engagement. And through their research they’ve found many, many simple design solutions, which obviously don’t solve the broader problem of gender inequality, but which work to make sure that infrastructure is designed in ways that try, bit by bit, to be more inclusive.
So for example, it was found that young girls like to sit in clusters of benches so they can talk to each other rather than in benches designed in a straight line. And equally with problems of designing out crime or maybe thinking about public safety, simple solutions like paint. So benches being in a bright pink colour might detract certain people from wanting to sit there and occupying space in a certain way, and conversely might make others feel more comfortable identifying with the space. So this is something that we try to bring into the spirit of public realm design as well. And I also like the way that we reflect on sustainability within the BID, because of course when we’re talking about diversity enhancements or street greening, these things don’t just have to do with interventions now, but also resilience being a very practical thing that’s thought through in terms of how funding can have a return on investment in the future. For instance, with this pocket park that I mentioned in Clerkenwell, the idea is really that it’s just a proof of concept for what a broader green finance for pocket parks framework might be within the Borough of Islington.
So we’ve been working directly with a member of the council to have this be a first step, which if successful could lay a groundwork for permissions for community engagement, and to replicate this intervention on highways land throughout the borough where not just this green space, but even more and more of it is so desperately needed.
Debbie Akehurst:
Yeah, absolutely.
Katie Mulkowsky:
So I think if we’re thinking through which members of our community might be engaged more honestly and earnestly through simple design solutions, but also how those can last and be replicated and spread throughout the BID area, throughout London, that’s a pretty good go at sustainable development.
Debbie Akehurst:
Yeah, absolutely. I think we touched on it earlier, the importance of having really good green space.
Mailys Garden:
I don’t know what to pick up on first. Everything you said was just so… I was just wowed throughout. The 650 people that have been through the academies and how that relates directly with the businesses that you’re involved with. Katie knows, I’m a big advocate for gender balance and diversity, so that’s something that’s so close to my heart. I’d be delighted to hear about that report, that research, Unbiased, that you’ve prepared. And I’m really delighted to hear that it finds ways of being incorporated into the design of spaces as well. That’s just absolutely brilliant. There’s just too many good things to pick up on.
Debbie Akehurst:
I think this is going back to what is the role of BIDs, and I think BIDs have definitely evolved and they keep evolving. And I think they will be looked at to be the leads in more of this, dare I say, as council budgets are squeezed more and more. And we all know cost of living crisis at the moment, just getting over from COVID and then we get hit by the cost of living crisis. I’m not going to get too political, so don’t worry. And BIDs play an important role in that. We work very, very closely with the Greater London Authority on this as well, as well as central government as well. So we do a lot of lobbying on behalf of our businesses as well. So it’s a real balance between that, as you were saying earlier, that strategic element. But that has to then play out in terms of deliverables on the ground.
Joe Tang :
Yeah, absolutely. It’s getting the stuff in in practise that can often be one of the biggest challenges, can’t it? And where BIDs can really help out in assisting that and getting things over the line. That’s a huge amount of interesting and varying work there. Like Mailys said, there’s so much going on there, so it’ll be great to see it all coming to fruition in the future.
Debbie, Katie, it has been absolutely brilliant to have you both with us today and thank you so much for taking the time. We’ve absolutely loved having you on the podcast. I think first, I speak for everyone when I say it’s been hugely interesting, hugely informative, and good luck with all that amazing work, the amazing projects, all the ESG work going forward. It should be great to see it all coming through.
Katie Mulkowsky:
Thank you so much, Joe.
Debbie Akehurst:
No, thank you. It’s been a pleasure.
Mailys Garden:
Thank you both. It’s been absolutely fascinating to learn more about what’s happening at CDA and how impactful BIDs can be. Thank you.
Joe Tang :
And that’s all from us from this episode. If you’ve enjoyed listening, you can find all of our previous episodes @momentum-city.com. Or wherever you get your podcasts, just search for Conversations in Momentum, and don’t forget to follow the podcast so that you don’t miss any of our future episodes.
Mailys Garden:
Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time.