British Land believes it could have rewritten the script for meanwhile uses on its site, after a new report showed the company generated £40m for the economy by turning empty offices into performing arts space ahead of their redevelopment.
NDT Broadgate was a project between the FTSE 100 REIT and the New Diorama Theatre that ran for a year until last July. The pair turned 20,000 sq ft of space in British Land’s 2 Finsbury Avenue, EC2, into rehearsal space, writing rooms, co-working areas, recording booths and a studio and workshop – all free-to-use for independent artists.
A report by BOP Consulting has revealed £40m of additional revenue generated for the UK economy through box office sales, funding from grant givers and spending by employees and visitors. The report found more than 1,000 jobs were created across the projects and benefited from the scheme. Meanwhile, close to 9,000 people came through the doors and helped more than 250 productions.
Speaking at the launch of the project’s impact report, British Land chief operating officer David Walker said the project spoke to real estate’s power of collaboration.
“Not just the power of collaboration,” Walker added, “but also determination and a collective spirit to get things done. It shows what can be achieved when like-minded organisations come together and act in ways which are bold and ambitious.”
Leap of faith
The project was born of the Covid-19 crisis, an attempt to help creative industries crippled by lockdowns. “It felt like during Covid, there was suddenly an awareness that the arts have been badly hit,” said David Byrne, artistic director at the NDT.
There were business benefits for British Land too, said head of social sustainability Anna Devlet, not least rates mitigation. But the impact has been the biggest inspiration.
“We had never done anything like this before, certainly in Broadgate, in the City of London,” Devlet said. “To a degree it was a leap of faith, a bold step… But it surpassed our expectations as a business, and it gave us the confidence to elevate our thinking and our understanding of affordable space.”
If British Land has shown what can be achieved, other real estate owners can follow that lead. Also on the panel was Emma Hatch, senior development manager at Transport for London, which wants to use its 850 railway arches and other parts of its real estate development pipeline to house ventures similar in impact to Broadgate NDT.
“There is a financial imperative on property owners and developers, particularly around retail spaces within central areas,” Hatch said. “The retail market has fundamentally changed and we need to adjust to that, adapt to that. It’s great to hear that there is also a demand for different types of use in that space and working in partnership. We need to unlock what those opportunities are.”
Story time
For Kane Husbands, artistic director and founder of The Pappyshow – a company that used NDT Broadgate, the project was a rare example of feeling listened to by the ultimate owners of the space in which creative companies operate.
“We represent marginalised people, maybe people of colour or disabled people,” Husbands said. “For that [space] to be open to us and for us to be at the beginning, to create a culture [in which] we were included, rather than the addition to it afterwards, just blew my mind. I couldn’t believe that someone had thought of us at the beginning of something rather than needing us at the end to try to make it look a bit better. Right from the start, we were included in the conversation.”
Of course, the conversation was always meant to end. With the building up for redevelopment as a two-tower scheme with 650,000 sq ft of office space, NDT Broadgate’s days were always numbered. But every story has an end. Husbands added: “It’s shit when you have the abrupt ending and experience dragged away from you. So you work towards the messaging: how do we hold our audience’s hand and let them know it’s closing?
“They [British Land and the NDT] did that so brilliantly. We all knew it was ending and we could find meaning in what this year gave us, rather than feel the sad it was over.”
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