Spotlight: Polly Turton

Throughout each quarter, we like to spotlight the wonderful people who make Love Design Studio what it is, showcasing their professional skills while getting to know them a little better.

 

Marking the fifth instalment in our Employee Spotlight series, we would like to introduce Polly Turton, our resident Head of Climate Action and Public Health.

Polly occupies a relatively unique spot here, as her dual role spans across both LDS and our sister company, Shade the UK. As such, we thought it would be interesting to dig into her role and discover more about the crucial work she contributes to across both organisations.

Let’s welcome Polly!

We’ll start with a fun one. What interests you most when you’re not in work? For instance, has there been any book or film in the past few months that have really gripped you?

Outside of work, I’m kept fairly busy by my family! When I get the chance, I really enjoy going to see art, design and photography, whether in museums, parks or public spaces. Sometimes I might go on my own, other times with friends or colleagues, and sometimes with my kids! Some of my favourite exhibitions this year have been ‘Women in Revolt’ at Tate Britain, ‘A Burning World’ by Gideon Mendel at the Islington Climate Centre, ‘Enzo Mari’ and ‘Design Researchers in Residence: Solar’ – both at the Design Museum, ‘Ed Clark’ at Turner Contemporary in Margate, and Yayoi Kusama’s ‘Pumpkin’ in Kensington Gardens.

I also love catching up with good TV and films of an evening. Recent viewings of note include the ‘Snowfall’ series and the film ‘Northern Soul’, both on BBC iPlayer.

So, you started working in your dual role at Love Design Studio and Shade the UK as Head of Climate Action and Public Health some 6 months ago. Could you explain your professional background and how you joined us in this capacity?

I would say my entire career has been associated with the built and natural environment. Ever since a short stint at David Morley Architects for my A-Level work experience, I have been working around built and natural environment professionals in some way or another. My summer jobs while I was studying Geography at the University of Manchester were also in this field.

My first ‘proper job’ after leaving university was for the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) which was a government-funded organisation with the mission of improving the quality of the built environment in England. I started as a summer intern working as a Policy, Research, and Communications Officer and left as a Senior Public Affairs Advisor. It was a golden era for public sector architecture and design in the UK. CABE also sponsored me to do a part-time Postgraduate Diploma in ‘Environmental Decision Making’ at The Open University.

My next ‘big job’ was for Arup, a global sustainable development firm where I stayed for some time in various senior climate change adaptation, environmental and public health consulting roles, becoming an Associate along the way. I got to work on some great projects and was also sponsored to do a part-time Master of Studies in ‘Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment’ at Cambridge University.

I first came across Shade the UK whilst working as Project Manager for the Mayor of London’s ‘Climate Resilient Schools’ programme, which had support from the Department for Education and Thames Water too.

Through site visits to schools in London, and surveys of school staff, my team established that overheating was the most widespread and pronounced climate change impact experienced by schools.

93% of schools reported overheating as an issue, 78% of schools reported it had a significant impact on students’ learning, productivity or behaviour, and 43% of schools experienced severe overheating throughout the summer term.

During the 2022 summer heatwave alone, the surveyed schools which reported significant overheating impacts experienced a total of 33 closed days, or an estimated 22,000 student-days of lost learning.

Shade the UK’s ‘Shade Islington’ work with schools in Islington popped up in a Google search for existing resources focusing on practical action to address overheating in and around schools. I reached out to Andy Love, Managing Director of Shade the UK and Love Design Studio, to explore collaboration, had a coffee and a chat or two, and the rest is history!

So, coming to work for Shade the UK as the Head of Climate Action and Public Health feels like the perfect fit for me right now. My job title sounds quite big time, but it makes complete sense in terms of what we are trying to do here.

In your current capacity, what are your main roles and responsibilities? What keeps you busy on a day-to-day basis?

I consider Shade the UK’s Theory of Change to be my job description, it essentially sets out how we plan to combat the joint challenges of rising temperatures and the associated health impacts. It also means my overarching performance target is achieving ‘zero deaths from overheating in the UK and safeguarding the health and wellbeing of vulnerable people during hot weather’, which really focuses the mind but is no small feat.

My main role is to translate our Theory of Change into practical, creative and meaningful action to achieve positive health outcomes for people – particularly vulnerable groups of people.

Therefore, my specific roles and responsibilities cover raising awareness of the problems around extreme heat and overheating, creating and sharing knowledge about how to tackle these problems, identifying and applying for funding to deliver practical heat adaptation solutions in the built environment, and trying to influence and inform policy and practice. So, my work can be very varied - there’s never a dull moment!

You’ve clearly worked in this climate and environmental space for a number of years now and you have quite a varied experience. How would you say the kind of work you complete for a purpose-driven company such as ours differs from your work in previous organisations?

So, the first organisation I worked for fresh out of university, CABE, was a medium-sized, Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB). This meant it was a public sector body, funded by tax-payer’s money and operated within the policy framework of central government. ‘Civil Service adjacent’, you might say. Arup, on the other hand, was a very large, long-established private sector company with some solid values, but inevitably came with all sorts of organisational hierarchies and structures.

Both of these, for separate reasons, were very different entities to work for compared to Love Design Studio and Shade the UK. Working for a relatively new, fast-growing purpose-driven company that is so passionate, skilled and ambitious is really refreshing! But it also feels like a natural evolution for me, and a good fit for my skills and experience, because the subject matter of my work is familiar, and the professional contacts and relationships I have established over the years are proving to be valuable and valued. So, I’m able to take the best of what’s old and embrace what’s new!

I am finding that the ways in which I am able to work and contribute to the Shade the UK mission and Love Design Studio projects are different too. My work feels more fleet of foot and locally responsive, and I can have more strategic input and creative freedom.

How would you describe the importance of combining climate action and public health in this role? How do the two roles complement one another?

It’s fundamentally important. If we aren’t doing all of this to improve people’s health, then what are we doing it for?

Our work at Shade the UK and Love Design Studio focuses on adapting the built infrastructure to be more resilient in the face of extremes of heat, particularly in light of the deadly heatwaves of 2022. How would you describe the importance of climate adaptation, particularly in contrast to more mitigative approaches?

It goes without saying that climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation are two sides of the same coin. We need to do both to contribute to genuinely sustainable development.

But no matter how successful we are at reducing carbon emissions through the way we plan, design, use and manage our built and natural environment, there will always be a need to adapt. The impacts of global warming on weather and climate we have already seen are likely here to stay, so we need to adapt and build resilience into our systems and behaviours to protect ourselves against these impacts. Especially the more extreme impacts, like we saw in summer 2022.

Throughout your time here, are there any projects that you would say are very representative of the broad role you have at this organisation? Please provide details.

Back in June of this year, I co-curated Shade the UK’s ‘40 Degree Stories’ exhibition at the Islington Climate Centre during London Climate Action Week, and at AHMM’s architects ‘Open Studio’ during the London Festival of Architecture in July. We successfully transferred our 40 Degree Stories from the Shade the UK website, into the climate, architecture and design community. We are looking to replicate this work and amplify the voices of those affected by the 2022 heatwaves even further next year, so watch this space for more events!

I have also recently acted as Project Director for the Holborn Liveable Neighbourhood Heat Risk Study, an exciting project we’ve been commissioned by Camden Council to work on. I can’t go into the details just yet, but the project focuses on giving practical, evidence-based guidance to local government and its stakeholders to protect residents, workers and visitors from extreme heat in the public realm. I am really enjoying deploying our technical and creative skills to establish a neighbourhood-scale understanding of heat vulnerability and heat exposure and developing targeted heat adaptation solutions. The project is still ongoing, and we look forward to sharing a full update later in 2025.

With regards to your work at both Love Design Studio and Shade the UK, making our built infrastructure more sustainable and resilient to extremes of heat, what do you think needs to change in the policy and regulatory landscapes to drive your work forward? What are the key hindrances to promoting change in this space?

On the policy and legislation side of things, one issue I’ve been thinking about recently is that there needs to be an informed conversation about redressing the balance between policy and regulations which focus on how our built environment ‘looks’ to those which focus on how our built environment makes people ‘feel’ – physically and mentally.

Both how things ‘look’ and ‘feel’ are arguably subjective and dependent on personal preferences and circumstances. But in my experience, the look of a new development or a retrofit project can often take priority over considerations of how safe, thermally comfortable and healthy it is for people, especially vulnerable people, to live in or spend time in.

For example, at one end of the spectrum we have sealed box residential towers, designed for nowhere and popping up everywhere, with large amounts of glazing, single aspect rooms, no openable windows, no building-integrated shading, and poor-quality amenity space at ground level. This means the flats become uninhabitable during hot weather, and there’s nowhere close by for residents to seek respite from the heat.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have swathes of existing homes and public spaces of all types which are either overheating or unusable during hot weather. Some of these are in conservation areas or have some kind of heritage status. Certain heritage policies (and sometimes personal preferences) are preventing practical and effective heat adaptation solutions, such as external shutters, canopies and awnings, or shade sails, from being retrofitted on buildings, within neighbourhoods or in parks considered to have historic value. The truth is more nuanced – many of our historic buildings, high streets, and parks originally had these kinds of features but they’ve perished over time.

In terms of what’s stopping change, or would enable change, we at Shade the UK believe that:

1.     Sustainable, affordable and equitable thermal comfort needs to be a requirement in planning policy, building regulations and design and retrofit guidance.

2.     Heritage policies need to be reviewed and updated so that new development and retrofit projects can integrate and implement effective and efficient heat adaptation measures.

Good, sustainable planning and design should be able to find a workable balance between aesthetics and comfort. The great indoors and the great outdoors should both look good and feel good for people.

So, for instance, if you were made Mayor of London tomorrow, what would the key policy changes you would make be? (Let’s have a serious one and a fun one).

My serious one would be a new policy requirement for all children’s playgrounds in London (in public parks, housing estates and schools) to have sustainable shade structures and drinking water fountains to enable children to stay cool and hydrated whilst playing and being active outdoors during hot weather.

But for a more fun one, I would want all the major shopping streets and high streets in London which put up Christmas lights in winter, to also put up shade sails and canopies in summer. There would be an annual competition for the most beautifully and effectively shaded street which I would judge!

What would you say you are looking forward to most this year? Both from a personal and a professional standpoint? Like a music festival, a trip abroad, or just anything fun!

Well, there’s not much of this year left now! But I’m looking forward to getting out beyond the M25 for a bit. As much as I love living and working in London, I always look forward to heading for the hills, woods and coast on trips and family holidays.

I’ve got a few things booked in already. Over the Christmas break, my family and I will be going up north to the Peak District, and we are planning on heading west to Pembrokeshire in Wales next summer.

Polly, it has been really interesting talking to you today - thank you for all your insights! Any plans for the weekend?

It’ll be a family-focused weekend for me! I’ll be painting my kids’ shelves in rainbow colours and I’m going to my niece’s roller disco birthday party!