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…..who doesn’t love a good story, around the fire, down the pub, on a road trip, on the tube, at the cinema, children’s bedtime, indeed...where-ever? But why name a property development company Stories?
Well, to kick us off, it was Shakespeare who observed, ‘what is the City but the People’ in Coriolanus, Act III, Scene 1. Not a play I know well but a powerful thought. A city is both defined by and shapes its people. On a daily basis we observe the complex and dynamic relationship between the built environment and humans, that has continued to evolve over thousands of years.
And it also seems clear to us that ‘what are People but their Stories’? We are defined by our experiences from the very moment that we enter this world, and amass a rich and complex narrative throughout our lives, unique to every one of us.
If we dig a bit deeper, we discover that stories are really really special and seemingly unique to people. To really understand their importance, have a read of Yuval Harari’s book ‘Sapiens’, read by James somewhere in deepest South America. And by myself over many evenings in the campervan, waiting for the 2 year old to fall asleep before I could utter a word to my wife ...quite a long time.
Yuval points out that stories are possibly one of the fundamental differences between us humans and other animals. That and making fire. Stories, whether fact or fiction, enable us not only to imagine things, but to do so collectively. Whether it’s the biblical creation, the United Kingdom, the dollar or the car company BMW - these things exist only as long as enough of us collectively choose to believe in them. And movements, wars and many other aspects of our lives have been conducted because of them.
But enough of Yuval. Why name a property development business Stories? Well the key is our mission: we want to enable people to live the best lives that they can. We want people to maximise their own capacity to do things that give them both purpose and pleasure.
And we are using property development as a means to enable to them to do that. We aim to both deliver our partners’ requirements to the highest standard and enable people that live, work and play both inside and outside the redline of our developments to do something better for themselves too. To tell a better story to their friends and family.
This means that both the ‘hardware’ that we create (the properties and spaces) and the ‘software’ that we deploy (the way we engage with people, collective efficacy, programming), play an important role in helping us achieve that.
If we create better outcomes for people through property development, we will be helping to create great cities. That’s what property developers should do, isn’t it?