Hi, I'm
Lily. 

My journey to Stories really started back in 2019 when I volunteered at Trust Leeds, a charity providing micro-loans for women on low incomes to establish their own businesses. During my time there, I worked with the ‘Glitter Fairies’, a group of women from Seacroft in North-East Leeds who sold glitter tattoos at local events. The Glitter Fairies explained that the charity was invaluable in bringing them together, particularly as Seacroft lacked sufficient community spaces, and its regularised housing combined with poor lighting strategies made the streets feel unsafe. The roots of these issues were not physical, but the built environment undoubtedly exacerbated their sense of isolation prior to working with Trust Leeds. Later, in 2022, I worked at the South West London Law Centre (SWLLC), which offers free legal advice to those in need, particularly on housing and benefits issues. The two months I spent there not only showed me that law was not the career for me (which was just as valuable as if it showed me that it was!) but also opened my eyes to the depths of London’s housing crisis and the stark realities of social welfare erosion. I met so many people with figuratively and physically nowhere else to turn aside from the SWLLC.

I continued to explore the connection between the built environment and daily injustices in my undergraduate dissertation, in which I investigated the relationship between the physicality of the London Underground and the prevalence of sexual violence for female commuters. For my postgraduate thesis, I decided to explore something a bit more hopeful and examined the successful activism against the proposed Murphy’s Yard development in Kentish Town, looking specifically at the alternative community-led plans put forward by local organisations. This piece of work showed me that radical alternatives to the status quo can and should be imagined, spurring my desire to work for a company that defies development norms (while still being able to deliver).

These five years of volunteering, reading and thinking led me to conclude that getting the built environment right is the bedrock of any thriving community, and I want to help create these foundations. When I began my job hunt, I worked backwards with this goal in mind. In my search, I applied to various development companies and planning consultancies, with a particular focus on large-scale mixed-use regeneration schemes. However, in this process, I faced some serious ethical dilemmas by applying to companies whose practices I frequently criticised in my academic writing. My ideal company, wholly committed to seeing communities thrive and the environment flourish through creative and inspiring development projects, was beginning to feel borderline utopian. But then I remembered Mayday Saxonvale and Stories. A few months prior, in my search for a postgraduate thesis topic, I had come across Mayday Saxonvale and was hugely inspired by their vision and masterplan. Unfortunately, as the project was in its early stages, I could not take this idea forward, but remained a supporter from afar and never forgot Stories. Flash forward, I dropped James a long email explaining all the above, met with him and Paul, and managed to secure myself a job. It all happened unbelievably fast and felt too good to be true, but now I’m here and loving it.

The length of my time at Stories is uncertain, as I have yet to fulfil my dream of travelling around Central and South America, re-learning Spanish and taking a pause from the unrelenting school-university-job trajectory. I am also hugely inspired by learning from other countries’ urban practices and desperate to see as much as possible with my own eyes. My mum moved to Hong Kong for a few years when I was 19, and the chance I got to visit her unveiled a whole new world of urban possibilities. I was privileged to have the opportunity to explore Hong Kong over Christmas in 2022 – the city was coming out of strict COVID lockdowns and was still quite difficult to travel to. Spending hours walking the half-empty streets and absorbing my surroundings as best I could is an experience I will never forget.

So, while I’m still figuring it all out, I’m unbelievably grateful to have kicked off my career at Stories. At 22, I have no real idea of what is yet to come, but being surrounded and supported by truly good people doing meaningful work is certainly not a bad place to start.