So, I went back into London Town for a work thing today...my first work-related outing in the City for over a year (unless you count meeting workmates at Borough Market back in December for a socially distanced mulled wine 😉)
Ok so it wasn’t back to my office it was a new venue. And what a venue!
This place has all the ingredients for successful, balanced, enjoyable working. Positively overflowing with biophilic principles – and thank you @natashajade for a recent introduction to these in the context of better working and living.
This flexible workspace is flooded with natural light, filled with lots of interesting and carefully positioned plants and those stunning living walls! The clearly delineated spaces set the expectations, whether that’s for reading, collaborating, exercising, concentrating, meditating, thinking, creating, reflecting, rejuvenating (great coffee!) and more.
I was reminded of a previous role in my career which was supporting educators with insights and practice around Communication Friendly Spaces with Elizabeth Jarman.
Back then, I was exploring learning environments and what children & young people needed...& crucially what they really didn’t need.
One of the things I used to encourage delegates to do was crawl around their baby room (if nursery practitioners) or sit on a Year 2 classroom ‘bug rug’ for 20 mins & notice if they got fidgety or distracted by the crazy busy posters & full-on wall displays. We’d encourage secondary school teachers to hang out at the back of the class, thereby transforming it to the ‘front’ of the class etc etc.
The point of all this was, how do the users of this space FEEL? Respected? Safe? Inspired? Happy? Engaged? And then we would encourage reflection on the links between how they feel and whether that enabled them to learn, talk, play or do what they were there to do?
What @foraspace is obsessed with and what it achieves in abundance is underpinned by those principles; creating environments that facilitate creativity and collaboration. Positive, enabling environments like these truly are communication friendly spaces. And that’s good news if we want to remain lifelong learners and happy, productive, creative and inspired workers.
If we’re going to make the best use of our on-site time in the office then an emphasis placed on how we ‘exchange’ feels like a very good idea indeed. Plenty to think about as we go forward to the office - hybrid or otherwise.
Creating, designing and occupying workspaces which encourage positivity - whatever the sector or role or seniority - will be an essential part in making any 'return' a success. We need this more than ever for our personal, professional, social and mental health recovery as we move through this pandemic.
Let’s add that to the roadmap.