Foodhall project

FOODHALL
'The Foodhall Project is an inspirational piece of social engineering that has design at its heart. Design as an agenda and design as a means to address inequality and societal division.'- Richard Brook on foodhall's Judging in Sheffield Design Awards 2016.

If creative people were in charge of our services, how would they move away from the types of services we see today. The job centres, the food banks, and the inhospitable homelessness services, Today they sigmatise, marginalise and demoralise, but if creative people were in control could they liberate identity, produce equality and build friendships and purpose? It is possible to totally reimagine society as it is inherited - but what techniques do we use in order to purposefully change how these social systems work?

Idea.
Foodhall is an open, public community kitchen and dining facility in the heart of Sheffield city centre, the concept was instigated as an elegant solution to some of modern societies biggest issues such as food poverty, social isolation, age imbalance, social segregation and scarcity. The project explores the new typology as comparable to the public library just as an open public place for sharing food rather than books. A space for altruism.

I founded the Foodhall project with Jamie Wilde in 2015, a social enterprise focussed on creating a new kind of community space for the city. I acted as ceo of the project for seven years and grew the project from a piece of architectural theory and radial city planning into a large project with over thirteen ‘branches’ and continuous improvement, with over 12 employees.

My time included Leading the entire lifecycle of the project, from business planning to delivering a day to day services, listening and developing with the feedback from the communities. I also built a system of social architecture for the space, which was rapidly changing and evolving. Much of my work was spent developing the project, and at front of the project. My co directors over time were Jamie Wilde, Isaac Tendler, Sam Atkinson and Alyce Biddle.

Most importantly, the agenda to genuinely listen to the points of view and understandings of the people who use the service, understanding their root needs and orientating provision towards that. Many of these people faced significant difficulty In their lives that included drug and alcohol addiction, homelessness, mental health difficulties, refugee and asylum seeking.

We created a ‘non service’ which provided a general faculty and outlet, allowing arts and culture within these community, along with essential services. This reduced all stigma and led to a position of individual social liberation, and enormous benefit to those individuals. Emergent needs that really enriched the project, and all of the people within it making it very well loved as a point of true social wealth.

The space was also the basis for idea of social architecture, and is an example of development in this field. Many of my ideas have emerged and grown from my work within the project and as my work was continually engaged in public, community development with the unique cross section of society.

The Project is now multi award winning, receiving the a Macewan award for architecture and social good, civic trust's Peoples choice award as the most popular new intervention in Sheffield by a landslide despite having the lowest budget throughout all categories. It was also validated by a panel of esteemed judges receiving the best small project award. It has been featured in all major newspapers and many smaller more community based articles have been written (Shout out to the open journalists!) it’s also been featured in the Venice biennale of architecture