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Stronger together: Why British Land is partnering Steel Warriors

When Ben Wintour sent an e-mail to British Land some 18 months ago asking if the REIT might be able to offer up some office space for his fledgling charity Steel Warriors he really didn’t expect a response.

But the e-mail pinged into the inbox of head of sustainability and corporate affairs Cressida Curtis and it immediately piqued her interest.

“I was new into my role and was looking at what the big issues were,” says Curtis. “We are heavily invested in London and one of the issues in London is knife crime. I was mulling this over and, very clearly, we are a real estate company so are not equipped with the skills to combat knife crime and then Ben e-mailed me, randomly.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

British Land found space within its Regent’s Place development, NW1, to house Steel Warriors, an offer that has not only given the charity a decent place to work from – enabling its staff to deliver, but that provided connections to other occupiers in the development and created a community where two very different types of individuals can come together to learn and socialise.

Steel Warriors is a charity that is aiming to combat knife crime by developing free outdoor gyms made from melted down confiscated knifes.

Knife crime in the UK has been on the increase since 2016. In the 12 months to March 2019 there were 43,516 knife crime offences in the UK – the highest number since data started to be collected in 2011. In London, the Metropolitan Police collect one tonne of confiscated knives every month.

Wintour wanted to take that “negative” steel and turn it into something positive.

“Steel Warriors started off as a campaign,” says former PR man Wintour. “A lot of money and resource is put into anti-knife crime campaigns and they had two key messages: that you are more likely to get hurt if you carry a knife and that you will get locked up if you carry a knife.

“While we felt that this messaging was true and well meant, we questioned its ability to resonate with young, vulnerable teenagers. We wanted to find out how we could tap into the motives that cause people to carry a knife and understand that better and use it as a way of preventing against the issue itself.”

Those motives were eventually identified as protection and bravado and Wintour believed that if he was able to develop places young people could develop physical confidence, he could lessen the need for those vulnerable young people to pick up a knife.

And so Steel Warriors was born and its first outdoor gym opened at Langdon Park in Poplar, E14.

Two other gyms are already operational, at Finsbury Park, N4, and Ruskin Park, SE5, but Steel Warriors has ambitions to open 20 free gyms by 2022.

For British Land, the partnership with Steel Warriors is developing into something more than just providing a charity with office space.

“We have a strong belief as a company that the places people occupy influence their behaviour so the better we design and manage places, the better people will feel,” says Curtis.

“There is a very direct correlation between the approach we take to designing wellbeing into our places and the approach that Ben and his team are taking towards combating knife crime. 

“If people don’t feel that they have to adopt that bravado facade then they are going to behave differently and that is what Steel Warriors is trying to tackle.”

Wintour says that as well as the Steel Warrior gyms providing a place where vulnerable young people can learn the physical tools to feel confident and protect themselves, they are also providing community facilities where people from different walks of life can mix.

He is hopeful that through relationships like its one with British Land, it can facilitate opportunities for young people, potentially establishing apprenticeships or other career opportunities.

And for British Land, the need to connect with a wider demographic is essential if real estate really wants to deliver.

“It is really important for our industry to be in contact with people we don’t usually come across,” says Curtis. “We need to be partnering with charities and other organisations like this that can make a difference in a way that we as an industry can’t do directly.”

She adds: “We didn’t have the skills to tackle knife crime, but what we did have some space, connections and other skills that Ben’s team could find useful and sometimes it is the really simple things that can make a big difference.”

LISTEN to the conversation in full below.

To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@egi.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @estatesgazette

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