Legacy in Practice Ep 4 Harlow with Matt Phillips

Episode 4 — Harlow & Gilston Garden Town

What does it take to build a public conversation around a development that didn't yet exist — in a town with no local newspaper left to tell the story?

In this episode of Legacy in Practice, Oliver Deed walks through Harlow town centre with Matt Phillips, Principal Communication and Engagement Officer at Harlow and Gilston Garden Town. The project spans five councils, two counties, more than 23,000 homes, and over a billion pounds of infrastructure investment. When Matt joined in 2019, there was no social media presence, no public narrative, and no community conversation. Just a government designation and a clean slate.

What followed was years of patient, methodical work — building audiences across platforms with deliberately different voices, opening a physical engagement hub in a former BHS unit in the Harvey Centre, and deploying an AI assistant modelled on Frederick Gibbard, the architect of Harlow's original New Town, to answer residents' questions about the one being planned around it.

This is also a conversation about what happens when a project is ready to move — and the process won't let it. Ten thousand homes in Gilston approved, then held by judicial review. A communications team with a story it wasn't yet permitted to tell.

Matt and Oliver talk about emotional investment, the death of local journalism, the discipline of a five-council partnership, and why the people who push back hardest are often the ones who care most about where they live.

The walk ends, as it began, in football.

This episode is part of the E.C.F. podcast series, exploring how community engagement shapes real places.

To learn more about our work, visit engagecf.co.uk or follow E.C.F. on LinkedIn for updates, insights, and future episodes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

This is Legacy in Practice, a podcast series from ECF. Engage, communicate, facilitate. For over eight years, ECF has worked alongside councils, public bodies, and development partners across the UK, helping major projects move forward by building trust, navigating complexity, and engaging communities meaningfully, especially when the conversations are difficult. I'm Oliver Deed, the founder and CEO of ECF, and in this series I'm walking back through the projects that shaped our work alongside the people who were there at the time. Each episode is recorded on foot, in the places where decisions were tested, relationships were built, and public scrutiny was very real. We're now four episodes in, halfway through. And what has emerged across every conversation in Enfield, in Finchley, in Cambridge, is that the best engagement doesn't begin with a process, it begins with a relationship. In this episode, we test that idea in a place where it's been put under real pressure. Oh my days. I'm slightly worried that somebody's gonna get garotted by that cost of sign.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Big name, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

What's all going on? We're in Harlow, and the weather it turns out is subject to rapid change, which seems appropriate for the project we're talking about. The Harlow and Gilson Garden Town is one of the most ambitious development proposals in England. More than 23,000 new homes across a five-council geography, and over a billion pounds of infrastructure investment attached to it. A project that, when it began, had no public profile, no social media presence, no community conversation. Building that from nothing is a communications challenge of a particular kind. And the man who's been taking on that challenge since the very start is Matt Phillips, a principal communication and engagement officer at Harlow and Gilson Garden Town. A journalist by training, a communicator by instinct, and someone who came to this project by a route that begins, of all places, at Wembley Stadium. We start our walk at the Water Gardens. One of the defining features of Frederick Gibbard's original vision for Harlow Newtown, it feels like the right place to begin. Because before the Garden Town, before the Five Council partnership, before a strategy was put in place, there was a career, and as it turns out, a football stadium. I reckon let's have a little wander around the water garden and then uh we go from there. So, how long have you been working on this project now?

SPEAKER_00 2:49

I started on this project uh quite a few years ago now, 2019. You think you look too young for that, eh? I know, I know. September 2019 and was one of the first staff members to come on board, really, given that the Garden Town got its status from government in 2017. So I was part of that initial programme that came forward uh with initial staff, really. And what were you doing before this? I worked at Wembley Stadium, uh, did the comms there across the FA Cup, so that was that was a big bulk of my career. But I've worked in comms in other areas.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Can I just say, by the way, we're both massive football fans. How did you give up a job at Wembley Stadium?

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Well, it begins with R, it's called Redundancy.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

Okay, okay, sorry, big fat foot gone into it.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

But I've worked in aviation comms, I've worked in uh engineering, so I've done a bit of a full gambit, which has been quite good to set me up for this role where you've got to be kind of all things to all people.

SPEAKER_02 3:40

Without getting this, this is not a job industry, obviously, but what actually attracted you to this particular job in the first place?

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Well, I had gone to I had done the NCTJ, the journalism course at at Harlow College.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Which Piers Morgan has done, I believe, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Yeah, one of the alumni. And um I had done that in the 90s. Um so that was my first real you know, I used to commute over from where I lived in Chelmsford. Um so that was my sort of first introduction to Harlow. Um course you always remember your education and things, don't you? And then the the role came up as being advertised. I don't know, it just felt like I don't know, not a coming home thing, but I'd started my comms journey at Harlow College, so it felt like something I would be interested in applying for as the Garden Town or Harlow grows to the future. So give us the elevator pitch on the garden town. What is it? Well, that's quite a complicated question. It's a five it's a five council partnership, but it's to do with the geography of the local area because it's cross-boundary. So that's why you've got Essex County Council, Hertfordshire County Councils, the two highway authorities, then you've got Harlow Council, Epping Forest Council, and East Hearts.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

Very good, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

You've railed just you just sort of reeled off the five partners immediately. So well, I've been on the project a long time now, Ollie. But I mean, look, that that has caused some confusion to be fair, with residents and in the public, in that people seem to think that Harlow would change its name to Harlow and Gilston Garden Town, but really it's it's an explainer for the geography and the four strategic sites that are coming across that geography.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

And it is a massive project, right, in terms of the number of homes and all the infrastructure. So give us a just a brief overview of all of that.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Well, 1.3 billion infrastructure investments have been identified across the partnership, that's including uh some of the developers to date. Um, 23,000 homes, of which 10,000 are going to come forward in Gilston, which is the East Hearts area, and then the rest will be across Water Lane, the town centre, Latham Priory, which is south of Harlow, and east of Harlow, where they are thinking that maybe the new Princess Alexandria Hospital might go there. That's still, you know, that's been stuck in the government's new hospitals programme for quite a few years now. So we're still unsure of where that's going to happen. I mean they've been promised a new hospital, whether it stays in the current site or goes over to the Easter Harlow site, which is the junction 7A of the M11, near Shearing, Shearing Village. So either or at the moment, but that's kind of what the geography is, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

It's I I think from my perspective, having been working on ECF projects for eight years, this is probably in terms of the scale, the biggest that we've worked on, both in the UK and Australia. It's just uh when when I when we first got involved, I didn't quite understand the geography and the scale of it and what was involved from a from an investment perspective. But then after a few meetings with yourself and NASHA initially, it started to dawn on me actually, this is a massive project, both both you know, not just for Harlow, but also for the the two counties involved, but also actually nationally, given the challenge that we've got to build all of that housing, which means that there's a massive comms challenge associated with it, which is where where you come in. So tell us a bit about what specifically you're looking after from a comms perspective and what you've done over the last few years.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Well, I mean it's it's quite a unique project from that view, in that it started from scratch. I mean it's very rare these days that you go into a comms role, I think, where there's no social media set up, no website set up, nothing in the public domain other than sort of sort of rather dry government documents explaining what this is going to be, no kind of word of mouth locally. So we've literally started with a bit of a clean slate to be honest with you, and we've built up the social media from scratch using Facebook and Instagram for residents, and obviously LinkedIn to get more into the technical aspects where you're talking to planners and more professional.

SPEAKER_02 7:32

Let's just let's just let's just a light there because I think that's really really interesting, actually, and how those different channels have been used over the course of the last few years. So the the audience on LinkedIn and the audience on Facebook and the audience on Instagram, they're all actually very different, aren't they, in terms of the stories that you put out. So maybe I've always found that Facebook is very resident oriented, there can often be quite a lot of hostility. But then if you look at something like LinkedIn, there's a lot more positivity because there's our industry perspective, right? So um how how how have you thought about that over the last few years?

SPEAKER_00 8:05

It all comes down to the it comes down to the demographic, doesn't it? You have got a slightly older demographic on Facebook, but that lends itself to some of the topics we want to talk about, which is uh sort of bus travel, people that the age group that might be uh reliant on buses, and then on Instagram, younger demographic, probably 25 to 45 seems to be the peak on the numbers there. They're interested in cycling or not having car ownership or or want to get on the housing ladder. So you do get you can post the same topic but get quite different responses across the two platforms, which is kind of ironic when you consider they're both meta platforms, but speaking to slightly different audiences, and then of course it's good to talk about what we're doing on obviously how this kind of seeps into what we're doing with you, Ollie, in terms of public affairs and how you angle that on LinkedIn and talk about planning and infrastructure progress and all that kind of stuff, really. I mean that might be a little bit dry for Instagram and Facebook, but obviously as an audience with within the sector we're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 9:05

So, talking a little bit about our role, I think we've been working with you now for three and a half years ish. So that's three and a half years of eight years that we've been running, by the way. So we've been working for you almost half of the time. And I've said this to everybody that we've interviewed. So uh uh don't I don't know whether this is too fawning, but we've really enjoyed working with you, I have to say. Um what why why did you why did you get why did you what was the sort of support that you wanted when you bought an agency in? What were you what were you after?

SPEAKER_00 9:35

Well, I mean, like we say, I mean, we're talking about the the scope, the ambition, the growth of the garden town. That's very difficult just for me to deliver on my own, albeit with the help of the commerce teams that we've got across the five council partners. The garden town is just one aspect of what they do day to day. You know, they've got they've got residence and services to provide and commerce to provide around that. So we when I when I first came in, it was all kind of approach that we would have we would have someone like yourselves involved in the project. Just as and I seem to recall you you sort of your proposal was kind of being that critical friend, which I think is probably a really good thing that we needed, really, and a soundboard for ideas, um you know, because we've we've generated a lot of content, as you said to me, you don't seem to generate a lot of content when you're.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Well you are a journalist, I have to say, yeah, journalist by name, journalist by nature.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Yeah. But sometimes you're not always sure if that's gonna land. Is this gonna land on Facebook? Is this gonna get negativity on Instagram? You don't want to burst the positivity bubble. So I mean I think that's really good where the likes of yourself can come in and say, have you thought about this? Have you thought about this angle? It's just that, I mean, it's soundboarding, isn't it, at the end of the day?

SPEAKER_02 10:42

Yeah, and there's been a bit around the the engagement side as well that we've worked with you on, and I I particularly think back to sort of highlights around getting Hello Lamppost involved in this particular project, which has been quite innovative. So, but you also actually put a different, almost a different persona to it actually. So, do you want to explain what you did with Hello Lamppost and how that sort of manifests itself in a physical form?

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Yeah, we Hello Lamppost first came on our um radar when we got prop tech funding from government around how you might digitise the planning process moving forward. Um and we ended up doing a project called Your Quality of Life and speaking to residents about what they wanted to see in the future. That's kind of that's kind of been a foundation for what we're doing in the garden town, and also probably a bit of a foundation for Harlow Council and they're kind of building Harlow's future, the regeneration of the town centre. So that's where I first saw Halo Lamppost. I thought it was really innovative in that you could put a QR code on a piece of you know street furniture or lamppost and um talk to it, you know, via AI. Um, and so we we we we spoke to them, we had some some of the funding, and you know, I AI is huge at the moment, isn't it? I mean it's it's you can't get away from it.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

No, I mean most people are scared about it, but we are here in person, we are here, yeah, yeah, just to confirm, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

It's not bots. Um I mean, look, there's a lot of worry, isn't there, in the media about it taking jobs, but I mean uh for us to use it in the comms world, I think is to use it as almost like an extra staff member, which is what we're doing on the Garden Town website.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

They they frame it as like a digital, almost a digital assistant, basically, to your your comms team in a sense. And I think you of all the examples that I've seen of clients using it, you you've perhaps got the best outcome as a result of the way you approached it.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Yeah, I mean we've made it a little bit more quirky. So we've taken Sir Frederick Gibbard, who obviously was the Harlow New Town planner, famous for the Harlow New Town, bringing it forward in the 40s and 50s. So we've taken a cartoon version of him and made him the digital assistant. So if you're a resident online, you've got a question about the town centre regen or what's going on with the garden town, then you can literally type your question in, and hopefully, we've got our knowledge base up to date and it'll answer it for you. But um, that's kind of the idea, and we got to the Essex Housing Awards 2025 with that. I mean, look, there's lots of great projects there, and we didn't win that one, but um, it was great for it to be uh acknowledged and nice for you know the local area, our council partner stakeholders to see us using uh innovative technology to engage with residents.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

Yeah, and then I I I think that was brilliant, and then the juxtaposition of that, but also something that I think is quite innovative, has been the Discover Harlow Hub and what's been done there. So it's almost a physical manifestation of innovation rather than a digital one. So, do you want to talk a little bit about what we did there?

SPEAKER_00 13:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean you you were front and centre of that because you helped us set set set up the original unit that we used in the Harvey Centre, which is the shopping centre here. Um yeah, that came out of the Your Quality of Life project. So people said to us, we want somewhere physical to go in the town centre where we can speak face to face. Um because I forget, because because our world is so digitally dominated by devices, not everyone's in that world, are they? No. Not everyone's in that world. And again, it comes back to demographics, doesn't it? So I mean, we I mean, so we we set up this unit in the Harvey Centre for people to drop in on a Thursday between a certain time period, I think it was 10 till 2, to come in and they could speak to Highlight Council staff, they could speak to Garden Town staff and ask their questions, and they might, you know, sometimes there's misinformation out there, isn't there? Quite a lot. I mean occasionally, occasionally. So people would come in with with certain ideas about things and feel a bit aggrieved about it, and it might impact them negatively, but would leave with the truth and thinking actually that's not as bad as I thought, and that could be something positive to take into the future. So it's it's been really good from that from that aspect.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

It's got one of the biggest interactive TV screens that I've ever seen. And I have to I have to give a big shout-out to my colleague Ashney actually who did a lot of the curation around this, and a few of the ideas in there were really her, really a manifestation of what she wanted to uh to achieve with it. And um I know I know it's gonna it's it's it's closing down for various reasons, but hopefully gonna come back in some form.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Well, we'd hope so. I mean the reason it's closing down is because it where we're located is in the prime area that um a a retailer wants to take over. Um and we got the setup costs originally from Homes England as part of their capacity fund, which helped us set it up in the first place. I mean the reason I mean it's been going over two, it's about two and a half years actually, I think. It's been actually going. Do you know how many people have gone through? Have we got a rough idea? It's gonna be thousands, right? Yeah, I would I would say so. I would I would say it would be in that ballpark, I think. I haven't got the numbers to date, but yeah, it's certainly it's certainly done the job. And actually, now that we're uh we're walking now, aren't we, onto the broadwalk here, and it was just the main thoroughfare in Harlow.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

So a lot going on in Harlow at the moment, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 15:40

Yeah, yeah. I think as because because the area is getting completely regenerated here, uh people are now seeing delivery on the ground, which means they've got less questions. You know, you've got Market Square being redone, the broadwalk as we're walking on right now has been repaved, the arts and cultural quarter by the theatre is going to be it has started, so people are actually seeing delivery in front of them rather than having a question. And I think probably we've seen a little bit of footfall, we've lost a bit of footfall because they're seeing stuff moving forward. It's almost job done.

SPEAKER_02 16:10

Not quite, not quite.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Harley Council, one of our partners, is doing a great job with the Harlow regeneration of the town centre. I think it's fantastic. Um, but of course, we're still really at the at it's baby steps towards the garden town because we still haven't built a house yet. I mean, that's the next stage for us. Well, the 10,000 homes got approved in January 2025 by East Hearts Council. It might come to no surprise to people listening that we've been through rather lengthy and judicial review processes uh before we can actually start building that.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

So that's been a which can be frustratation, frustrating for a comms team, can't it? Because you're sort of ready and raring to go, but you've got to wait to go through all of these legal loopholes before you.

SPEAKER_00 16:51

Exactly. We've not really been able to speak about Gilston publicly. I mean, there's lots of great things that are coming forward. Uh country park, leisure centre, swimming pool, sports facilities, football hub, employment land. But yeah, from a cons point of view, we've not been able to tell that story, as you rightly as you know, working so closely with us, we've not been able to tell that story yet because of that process. But we're moving away from that now, and um maybe we'll start seeing that progressing in 2026.

SPEAKER_02 17:17

By this point in the walk, we've covered a lot of ground. The built from scratch, the social channels constructed from nothing, the Discover Harlow Hub in the Harvey Centre, offering residents a place to walk in and ask their questions, and an AI digital assistant modelled on Frederick Gibbard himself, the man who designed the new town, answering questions about the one being planned around it. And we've also covered the frustration of Gilston. 10,000 homes approved by East Heart's Council in January 2025, then held again by judicial review. A communications team ready to tell a story it wasn't yet permitted to tell. But things are beginning to move, and with movement comes a different kind of task. Not building an audience from scratch, but managing a community through change. The conversation now turns to something that has defined Matt's work from the beginning. Not any single campaign, not a single channel, but the architecture of the partnership itself. Five councils, two county authorities, multiple developers. And the communications task of pointing them all in the same direction. One of the things that I wanted to talk to you about was about partnership and how that works. So one of the things that people from the outside probably wouldn't know is that you've mentioned the five council partners already, but actually pulling those people together as well as the developers that are involved and almost trying to point all the ships into the right direction from a comms perspective is quite a lot of the job that you're doing, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Yeah, exactly, exactly that. I mean, when I first started in 2019, the Garden Town was just an informal garden town board of the five partners, and that's progressed into a into a fority agreement that we now have a legal joint committee of which all five partners sit on. We had one of our meetings this week as we speak at the end of March here. Um but yeah, I mean that's the role of the Garden Town Director as well, to get everyone on the same page and moving towards progression. Otherwise, what's the what's the what's what's the flip side of that coin? Procrastination and nothing gets done.

SPEAKER_02 19:20

By the way, we've sat we're coming past the monument for the original Harlow Development Corporation when uh new towns is a big uh converse topic of conversation and garden communities and all the rest of it, and there's there's that one.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

Yeah, it is, yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean the the new towns is exciting, isn't it? Because we know the government want to build 1.5 million homes. New towns are going to be central to that. But you know, the garden town fits into that model. We've got the same scope, growth, and ambition as those seven that were announced this week. Um, you know, we we we sit front and centre in being able to deliver those homes for government over the over over the coming years.

SPEAKER_02 19:57

So, what do you think the comms is going to look like from a Harlow and Gilson Garden Town perspective moving forwards?

SPEAKER_00 20:05

I mean it's always it's always been a funny one, really, because when I as we spoke about earlier, when I was at Harlow College, there were three newspapers in Harlow. You had the Harlow Citizen, Harlow Star, Harlow Herald. None of those exist anymore. And your Harlow, run by Michael Casey, and he does a great job on it, uh, kind of the last bastion of journalism in the town, um, in in it to be able to tell you know what the local news is. So for us on our channels on Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn or wherever it might be on our website, we've had to try and pick up the mantle of actually giving information and news to residents as a as a local newspaper would. So I see it continuing like that, um, but as you head towards as you head towards delivery of everything, Ollie, um, you know, if there are going to be road closures and stuff. I mean, I I I see our role being that as well, helping people, you know, we talk about your quality of life. Well, you need help need to help manage people through what's going to be some disruptions moving forward.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

Yeah, so it's almost helping the existing community navigate the change, and then as people come into the area, you know, helping them become a sort of rich part of the community, you know. That's sort of that's sort of the way that I would I would see it, almost two twin pillars that you'll be running moving forward.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Yeah, I totally agree with Vionny, and you'll you're seeing the regeneration of the town centre here. Why are they doing that? Because they want to make Harlow a go-to destination. Well, the Garden Town sits within that footprint as well. So you once the houses start to be being built, marketed, sold, then you want people to be part of that story as well, and and and to be part of that Harlow is a a great place to live and bring up a family in the future, as was the premise of Gibbard and the New Town back in the 40s and 50s.

SPEAKER_02 21:50

And I think it's of my days. I think Matt we're gonna we're gonna decant into the shopping centre as the Climate is working against us currently, so we will head in. I'm slightly worried that somebody's gonna get garotted by that cost of sign. It's all going on. So one of the things, Matt, that we've talked about is around people's emotional investment, attachment to a place, and how that drives the way they respond to change. You've really seen that play out in Harlow over the last few years.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

It takes me back to my sporting experience, to be honest, Ollie, in that people are emotionally invested in their football team, cricket team, whatever sport it's in, they want to have their say on it. And I'm seeing exactly that same amount of emotional investment in what we're doing in Harlow and the surrounding area, and people want to have their say on it. I think it's probably human nature, isn't it, to kind of resist change that isn't your idea? As we go past the old Discover Harlow Hub, the initial one. Yeah, I think there's a there can be resistance there until you've kind of informed and educated people on what's coming forward and how it might benefit them as individuals or maybe the next extension of their family and generations to come.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

Matt, we're walking past the very first Discover Harlow Hub.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:11

Why is it what's going on in there now?

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Well, the Harlow Council own what the building we're in at the moment, it's theirs now, the Harvey. The Harvey Centre, which is the shopping precinct here. So it's going to be it's going to be redeveloped over time. But yeah, this served its purpose, didn't it? I mean, it was a huge unit, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 23:29

It was, I look at the size of it. Yeah. What was it before?

SPEAKER_00 23:31

It was it was a part of uh BHS British Home Stores, I believe. This might have been the cafe area, or that was it next door. But yeah, it was it was part of that.

SPEAKER_02 23:41

I remember when we were when we were in here kitting it out, and I my first thought when I initially walked into it was blind, this is massive, this space. How are we going to kit this thing out?

SPEAKER_00 23:50

I mean, it kind of lent itself only to us being able to have external meetings here. We had like our developer forum here, and Harlow Business Forum also held their stuff here. So there was there were events here, um, and it worked really well, like we say. Your quality of life funding, um the feedback helped promote this. Uh Homes England, sorry, was the was the funder for it. But um yeah, it gave people that central point in the shopping centre right here in the heart of Harlow to come and talk about what the future might look like.

SPEAKER_02 24:20

We're sort of wandering now down towards the new Discover Harlow Hub. The the one thing I will say is that we we always refer to it as an urban room, but people don't like that terminology here, do they?

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Well, that's how it started, really, as an urban room, and it just kind of morphed into its own brand of being an engagement hub, really.

SPEAKER_02 24:37

And Discover Harlow Hub's quite a nice brand, actually. It works quite nicely.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Discover Harlow was like an initial kind of business networking brand for Harlow Council.

SPEAKER_03 24:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

And yeah, why not? It lends itself to what's going on, doesn't it? Town centre regen, garden town development. Um, you know, times times are changing positively with with good growth.

SPEAKER_02 24:59

And actually, Lawrence and I walked past here earlier on to go and get a coffee, and there was loads of people in here, although I think it might have been a council meeting, that's the only thing I'll say. But you said that this is it's gonna close down because obviously there's work that's going on at the Harvey Centre, but the hope is to bring something like this back in the future?

SPEAKER_00 25:19

Yeah, I mean whether or not, I mean, as as Harlow's now, uh as Harlow's now regenerating the town centre, what's the big thing they want? They want well-known retailers to come here. We've already seen IKEA, David Lloyd, Mark Suspence has announced as coming recently, MS. Um, so the hope is to get that level of, I would imagine, that level of uh retailer to come into the shopping centre. Um so whether the Discover Harlow Hub will come back in that format, we'll have to wait and see. The fact that Harlow Council owns this building is great for us because we can do pop-up events on a weekend or during the week. Maybe it will morph into more something more like that. We'll have to wait and see, I think.

SPEAKER_02 25:57

I I'm pretty proud of what we've achieved actually over the last three and a half years. And yeah, I think we've we've had a really strong working relationship, which has been great. So and it's meant that we can flexibly change and do different stuff. We've never we've never we've never just started doing one thing rigidly, we'd just no exactly that.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

And you know, I've got my journalistic background and working on social media and that kind of thing, and you bring a public affairs angle to stuff. So I think we, you know, that I mean that's good teamworking, isn't it? Different skill sets that complement each other day to day.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

And we both love our football, eh?

SPEAKER_00 26:27

And we do, we do.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

Arlo is a town built on optimism. Frederick Gibbard's post-war vision was to create a place where people could live well, with space, with light, with community designed into the fabric of the place. The Garden Town is in many ways a continuation of that ambition. But scale changes things. Here we're talking about 23,000 homes across five councils, a project stretching across a geography that most residents had never thought of as connected. That doesn't communicate itself. What this conversation has made clear is that communications on a project like this isn't an ancillary function. It's integral to success. It holds the partnership together when the partners pull in different directions, it manages the gap between announcement and delivery, and those long years when something is coming, but nothing yet visible is there to prove it. It keeps a community connected to a process designed for institutions, not people. And it builds the kind of trust that once lost is very hard to recover. Matt started this work with a clean slate. No followers, no platform, no public narrative. What he built was an audience that believes something is coming, and that when it does, they will be part of it. Hollow is still waiting for its first garden town home to be built, but the groundwork, and the real groundwork, has already been laid in the conversation. If you found this episode useful, please rate the podcast, follow the series, and share it with colleagues working in planning, development, and engagement. There are more walks, more projects, and more lessons to come. This is Legacy and Practice.