“You are on mute,” may have been one of the phrases synonymous with 2020, but the year was quite the opposite, with our voices being globally connected and heard virtually for the first time. This has been a year of activism, campaigning, challenging inequality in architecture and society, but also a year of knowledge sharing, upskilling, and optimism for the future.
The virtual world, without geographical boundaries and the challenges of the M5 motorway has enabled better engagement with our region's more rural and isolated architects, alongside our larger urban cores. One of the RIBA Nations and Regions Committee successes from 2020 was the ‘Town Hall’ events hosted across the country, with members able to raise questions, share data and intelligence of the impact of Covid-19 directly with the RIBA Senior Management Team and our CEO, Alan Vallance. In RIBA Wessex, this meant we had members from Chipping Campden to Weymouth –3 hours and 150 miles apart – who were able to join us for the virtual session, saving approximately 170g/km CO2e per commuting car, and thousands of pounds in professional time. A silver lining of the pandemic.
In 2020, the Region launched our ‘Local Authority Engagement Group’, as a vehicle to draw together our collective expertise, resources, and to build upon established public sector relationships and successes, such as the ‘Build It Beautifully’ in Taunton, ‘Driving Up Design’ with Gloucester City Council and BCP Unitary Authority Consultations in Dorset. With the Future Homes Standard announcing local authorities retain the right to set their sustainability criteria, our engagement with policy-leaders to support them in meeting their Climate and Biodiversity Emergency declarations, and championing the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge as a baseline standard will continue throughout 2021.
The launch of the ‘Small and Emerging Practice Group’, a partnership between RIBA Wessex and RIBA South West, has been another success story, with members meeting to discuss collaboration between small practices, shared knowledge on PII increases, and importantly, build a community of architects that can support each other, at present via a LinkedIn group.
And finally, during 2020, in partnership with the Green Register, we have trained 120 architects on the practical tools and knowledge to deliver on the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge - our ‘climate first responders’ who have the expertise to deliver on meeting the challenges of the climate emergency.
These activities are in addition to the fantastic work being undertaken by our local Branches, Committees and Universities across the region, with the ‘Humans of New York’-esque Instagram stories by RIBA Bristol and Bath, the socially distanced running club by RIBA Dorset, member engagement with Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) consultations, to UWE Bristol students building their outdoor teaching facility, keeping us updated via TikTok, being a few of the many highlights.
If 2020 was a year of talk and connectivity, 2021 is going to be a year of action, with a regional focus on data, outputs, creating a body of knowledge, and harnessing the power of our virtual networks.
Following Joe Biden’s swift re-joining of the US to the Paris Agreement, a ‘year of action’ seems quite an apt statement of intent for the Region, as we resume with our intended programme of climate-focused events with a crescendo of activity leading towards the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in November.
Our ‘People, Place, Planet’ manifesto will be continued in 2021, however we remain dynamic as we adapt to Covid-19 and will need to be reactive to the fast-paced changes in society and our working environments; including the impact of Right to Regenerate, the high streets recovery, mutant algorithms dictating housing supply, and the outcome of the Planning Reform.
And finally, with all these opportunities to champion the Rregion’s architects and architecture on a newfound virtual and global platform, we must not forget the importance of locality, human interactions, and local relationships. With slight optimism, as we look at the path out of the pandemic, there may be hybrid solutions to continue to be engaged virtually to our farthest corners of the region, whilst also enabling some form of pre-Covid normality, which celebrates people.
Tom Bell, RIBA Wessex chair, January 2021
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