Our 25th Birthday! – Latest
It was our 25th Birthday on the 19th September. We held a party, lots of people came, lots of drinks were drunk and lots of moves were thrown out of time with the live music. We held it at our new office, The Building Society in the heart of Fitzrovia. You should come and see it, and if you like it, we have space to rent - check out The Building Society. The party itself was a huge success, and judging from the twitter comments, and the photos shown here, our guests had a great time.
The undercurrent of our celebration also had a serious note, and that is our call to action. We didn’t want to have a big party and tell everyone how far we’ve come in the last 25 years. We wanted to have a big party and talk about the next 25 years, and not just our next 25 years, but all of our next 25 years. Having so many people at the party, from the influencers to the young creative types who will influence the influencers, it was the perfect setting to spend a little time, before the party really got going, to highlight the challenges we all face. The news is rife about the environment and the plight we are in, but who is doing anything, and who needs to start it, especially when there are such distracting matters like Brexit. And what are the questions we need to address anyway, particularly in our industry. We don’t have the answers, and that is why for our 25th birthday we released a Manifesto, a call to action, a hand thrown out to everyone in our industry for help.
The challenges are so huge it is hard to compartmentalise or comprehend, so first we have to be introspective and look at ourselves and what we can do. We want to be here in 2044, we want to be able to look back and know we did something, not just for us, but for everyone, and we did it together, regardless of allegiances and politics. Because let’s face it, if we don’t, there will be no more parties, no more celebrations, no more companies, no more people. If you want to help, check out our manifesto here, or come to The Building Society and attend one of our talks or events.
We thank everyone who attended, we hope you all had a great time, enjoyed the food, drink and questionable dancing, met some interesting people and took one of our Manifestos with you. We look forward to seeing you at our next party, and we can look at a new book that doesn’t have so many questions, but instead shows all the amazing things our industry has done, all the changes and improvements we have made so future companies can have a 25th.
Gary Elliott, CEO and Co-Founder of Elliott Wood spoke at the party
“It is fantastic to see so many people here this evening. Wow!! For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Gary Elliott Co-Founder and CEO of Elliott Wood. Thank you very much for coming along this evening to help us celebrate 25 years in practice. Rather than looking back over 25 years of innovation and award-winning projects we feel it more appropriate to look forward to the next 25 years and really challenge ourselves to think about the impact we want to have for today, tomorrow and the future. To this end, we set out to create a MANIFESTO. This is not about us, or our work, but about some of the big questions that need to be answered by us and by our industry as we move further and further in to the fourth industrial revolution. We do not have all the answers, but we do know that as an industry we need to move from the current state we dare to call “BAD’ to a future that has to be ‘GOOD’. But how do we go from Bad to Good?
We have created a series of pillars called Ethics. Education - Technology - Health - Infrastructure - Culture – Sustainability. We use these pillars to challenge ourselves and to challenge you to explore how our collective efforts can have greater impact. This is the basis of our Manifesto but we want this to be a call out to you all to get engaged, get involved and help us to engineer a better society. Please do take a copy when you leave this evening!
For us it is important that this isn’t just about words, it is about action. This was the fundamental principle that drove us to develop our new concept which you will not fail to notice tonight – “The Building Society” This is a co-working space for those involved with the built environment with a view to promoting collaboration, with learning and development at the heart. This space was set up to help deal with some of the key issues that our industry currently faces.
We believe that no one person or company can solve the problems in isolation and that collaboration across all aspects of construction is essential if we are to solve the very significant challenges that we face. We want The Building Society to create a physical and virtual collaboration space where all involved are encouraged to participate in presenting, listening and debating the challenges with the intent that this should lead to progressive action. We are very excited about this new venture and we hope that this will be the first of many.
Finally, I would just like to thank all of our Clients, collaborators, friends and of course my fellow directors and our fantastic team. You have all helped us to get to where we are today. It is an exciting and hugely challenging time but where there are challenges, there are opportunities, and we look forward to exploring these with you.
Please do enjoy this evening and please do take a manifesto with you. And please, please do get INVOLVED!
Thank you”
To hear more about our Manifesto and to get involved, email us at ethics@elliottwood.co.uk