海角视频

Bianca Laura Latini, associate engineer and global social impact Lead, Alex Calkin, Sustainability and social impact consultant, and Philippa Garnett from our sustainability and ESG consulting team host a roundtable on social impact.

Women in senior leadership and social impact in the South West attended a roundtable discussion on the challenges, opportunities, and future of social impact. The topic focused on how to embed social impact into our engineering design and consulting to create more equitable, inclusive, and sustainable communities. This took place at Migrateful鈥檚 cookery school in Bristol with Kule 鈥� our chef who helped our guests create a Sri Lankan feast whilst telling stories about his homeland, traditions, love of food, and journey to the UK.

is a cookery school dedicated to supporting and celebrating migrants within the area on their journey to employment and integration. By the unifying power of food, they aim to bridge divides, challenge stereotypes, and promote unity. To date, Migrateful has hosted 4,000 cookery classes, enriching the lives of more than 40,000+ participants, and supported 92 chefs from around the world, giving them a platform to share their culture, culinary brilliance and pursue happier, fulfilling lives. 

We started the session with participants recalling their favourite childhood meals and later discussed why social impact in business and the built environment is important, what, why, and how it should be measured, what funding and governance relationships look like, and what our collective vision for a better future should be. 

The discussion offered unique insights on social impact and different perspectives that together provided three key takeaways:

Existing common practice and tools need to be addressed

There are clear challenges around contemporary tools and monetisation practices that need to be addressed. The feeling in the room was that the social value 鈥榗reated鈥� by the status quo was overinflated and/or double counted, negative consequences were ignored, and real-world outcomes of decisions were rarely monitored. Social value was identified as a potentially problematic term (海角视频 prefers social impact) that has led to a focus on regulatory compliance (box ticking) and created a system that can be gamed. 

Measurement is important but improving quality of life needs to be at its heart

The industry largely measures outputs (such as apprenticeships), rather than outcomes (such as quality of life). Measuring social impact is conflicting for many professionals, particularly in an industry which has placemaking at its core. It feels wrong to put pound values on human outcomes like health, happiness, equity, companionship, creativity, purpose, and general human flourishing. However, if we are to transition into an era of socially and environmentally responsible capitalism, we must recognise that natural and social capital are more valuable than financial capital, measuring and reporting it in a clear and communicable way to all stakeholders.  

Stewardship and long-term planning is essential

It鈥檚 not just about good intentions and measurement 鈥� stewardship and a long-term plan for financing, governing, and maintenance are critical to ensuring genuine success and resilience. Likewise, ensuring that stakeholders have stewardship of aspects of social impact that they have genuine agency and expertise over, rather than copy and paste strategies, would be a step in the right direction. 

Find out how 海角视频 is designing systems, cities, and places that positively impact people here.