What do you bring to the club?
I bring a different perspective from lots of different experiences. I am passionate about inspiring & empowering people to change the world. People get so overwhelmed by the magnitude of what needs to be done to be more truly inclusive, equitable and diverse, and the easiest things to do is do nothing. I set up 'Purpose Driven Impact' to provide simple solutions and actions you can take in starting to become more inclusive. Simple, no nonsense & non-judgemental training, consultancy, organisational restoration and supporting with strategies for success. I've had a varied career and worked across the UK, USA, Australia & Africa in the commercial sector, professional sport, international development and international sport for development & charity sectors. As former CEO of Special Olympics Great Britain, I led a major transformational change programme culminating in a new strategic plan called “Inclusion in Action” which sets the roadmap for the future of the organisation. I am passionate about inclusion, diversity and belonging and creating inclusive environments which inspire people to be the best they can be. I bring some great stories and expertise to assist with breaking down barriers and helping people to make small changes which will have a huge impact. If nothing else, I bring an Irish Mancunian sense of humour!
What makes you unusual?
I am so uncool, that I am probably cool! I can drive a tractor & a digger, and once assisted a vet with a c-section on a cow (my folks have a farm in Ireland). I played football for Man United ladies in my youth, I was an Irish Dancer before it was cool, I brought the King & Queen of Lesotho to a T20 Cricket Match in Durham and I've been the only female president of a professional football club in an African country!
What do you want from the club?
I want to have some interesting conversations which light a spark. I'd like develop relationships and network with people who also want to change the world. If I can help people to look at creating more inclusive and diverse environments in a different way and inspire people to take action, then I will be happy. As a new business owner with huge ambitions to develop my business, Purpose Driven Impact, I want to be in a position to create paid employment and entrepreneurship opportunities for those who live with an intellectual (learning) disability, and create more environments and platforms where they can share their inspiring and empowering stories. Collaboration, Networking, Storytelling, Inspiring & Empowering.

What do you bring to the club?
I bring two different design solutions to the members of Home Grown ... • -•- • -•- • -•- •• -•- • -•- • -•- •• -•- • -•- • -•- •• -•- • -•- • -•- •• -•- • -•- • -•- • -•- • -•- • -•- •• -•- • -•- • -•- •• -•- • -•- • -•- •• -•- Through Eau Rouge Ltd. I create strategic, targeted and beautifully designed branding for businesses, plus any ongoing graphic design for print. I also design and build gorgeous and modern Squarespace websites. My websites are future-proof - We could start with a simple site designed to appeal to your target audience, and then - if and when it suits the business - add features such as a shop, a blog, a newsletter, or paid-for content in a membership area. I design websites that my clients can totally edit and update themselves, without it getting all too techie, or having to pay to outsource minor changes. • -•- • -•- • -•- •• -•- • -•- • -•- •• -•- • -•- • -•- •• -•- • -•- • -•- •• -•- • -•- • -•- • -•- • -•- • -•- •• -•- • -•- • -•- •• -•- • -•- • -•- •• -•- As Jade Thomas Jewellery, I design one-off pieces of luxury jewellery, featuring diamonds and rare or unusual coloured gemstones. I have a range of ready-to-wear pieces on my website, but I also design bespoke commissions and redesign inherited jewels into new pieces.
What makes you unusual?
With my design business, the answer is that I'm able to step into the mindset of your ideal clients really quickly, in order to create designs that appeal to them. With my jewellery, most of my gems are so traceable that I can tell you the exact day and location they were discovered and show you an image of how each gemstone looked before cutting and polishing. They are truly one-offs and make amazing gifts or a treat to celebrate a success!
What do you want from the club?
Firstly, having a beautiful, safe and central location in which to meet clients or simply use as a base when in London is a fabulous benefit to me and my businesses. It's also an inspiring place to meet business owners and entrepreneurs, and it is so, so much nicer than staying in a random hotel room on my own - I've also made some fab friends here! The staff are wonderful, friendly and I'm so happy to be a member. Whilst we've all been at home the webinars have been inspiring and thought-provoking, but I look forward to staying at HG again when possible.

Property Club Series: The London Collective

The London Collective was launched right here at Home Grown in November 2019

As Founder Max Farrell puts it “At that time, we had about 100 people downstairs at HG club and we presented ourselves as a virtual network of built environment experts and creatives who are all connected via Microsoft Teams, at the time that seemed very novel and little did we know that the entire world within about two months, would be doing exactly the same thing!”

Pippa W invited the LDC to talk to our Home Grown members through their initiative; #ParkPower and how it has been navigating and continue their mission during the pandemic.

Max Farrell: “One thing that we all became very aware of, during the pandemic, was that the people’s perception of the value of Parks had changed dramatically, but at the same time, it’s also increased the problems that parks and park owners are facing with much higher usage, for example, the demands from different types of users whether that’s cyclists or social events or, even people using trees as gyms equipment. Some of the big issues around with this new high-density amount of people are litter and toilets and also safety”

** #ParkPower, a four-month-long initiative to explore public sentiment around London parks revealed its findings, alongside a portfolio of recommendations for futureproofing parks as vital parts of our city.

The first phase of the project revealed the four key recommendation areas for those who own, manage and design urban parks:

Community cohesion: create spaces to enable joint creativity, incidental meeting, arts and music, and local identity-building
Protect and increase natural capital: support wildlife, improve biodiversity, rethink plant palettes, experiment with food growing
Improve accessibility, mobility and connectedness: start a green link network, reprioritise pedestrians and people with disabilities
Embed technology that enables: capture the right data to inform decisions, build digital platforms to enhance park use, install smart lighting, bins and gates, retrofit green tech to generate energy.

** Source https://ldn-collective.com/insights/parkpower/

A key takeaway from this innovative talk was Max’s recommendations for leading collaboratively.

“Leading collaboratively is key because town centres and high streets are the work of many hands, and it has to be public-private partnerships that really listen to the voice to local people, but, but each plays their part in collaboration and capitalises on all these new government initiatives and funding that is out there to improve the experiences of high streets and introduce new housing.

Also try to bring back each town’s identity, which I think has somehow gotten lost along the way and. And every time does have an identity and it just needs to be revealed and understood better.

We have this programme of urban rooms where people can go and empty shops in high streets and see models and exhibitions about the past, the present and the future I think that’s really important.”

After Max’s wonderful presentation, Pippa and our members went on to a Q&A, here’s one of our favourites from the day;

Pippa: “Anyone who knows me will know I’m completely property obsessed hence running this series with Home Grown, but in particular at the moment I’m working on a project, and we’re looking at invigorating town centres and shopping centres and how that works.

I think one of the challenges that we’ve come across is, is that fundamentally consumers have become quite lazy, and everyone uses the likes of Amazon to order their goods from a service that mostly arrives on our doorstep!

What it is that you envisage now in terms of servicing the landlords of these high streets, how do you see that working?”

Max: “I think it’s about changing the mindset .because people have this idea of the ‘15 minute city’, which is people needing to, and wanting, to have everything they need within 15 minutes of walking out the door, which is really interesting and arguably quite a good thing for the renascence of town centres.

It’s city centres that really need to direct the event themselves and I was talking just earlier this week with the adjacent Terell who’s the Chief Executive, the New West End Company and it’s amazing how they’re having to think radically different about the types of occupiers that are coming in to potentially take over from the Debenhams and the Top Shops.

There’s certainly that dichotomy between landlords who want secure anchor premium tenants. And actually, what drives people to the high streets, and into the towns. There is a bit of friction between the two.”

You can watch the full conversation here.

Meet Pippa:

Managing Director – PiggyBack Property

Pippa started her career as a funds lawyer in a global City law firm and has continued to focus on the property and private equity sectors throughout her career. Pippa established a number of traditional property funds, across both commercial and residential sectors before concentrating her efforts on innovation in the housing sector including property crowdfunding and Build to Rent.

Meet Max:

Founder, LDN Collective
Max is the Founder & CEO of the London Collective, a network of built environment experts and creatives fighting to improve people’s lives and the planet’s prospects. They are a radical and agile ‘one-stop shop’ for projects anywhere in the world. Max’s expertise lies in placemaking and communications. He was a Partner at Farrells for 10 years, the internationally renowned architects with offices in London, Hong Kong and Shanghai, before leaving to set up the London Collective in 2019. He is currently leading on the vision and masterplan for a new town in Oxfordshire with 6,500 homes and a national centre of excellence for Modern Methods of Construction, on behalf of Summix Capital.

I sleep there, I eat there, I meet friends there, I have business meetings there, I like it, It's my club! Gregg Wallace

It’s always a delight to meet, network and entertain amidst the generally relaxed vibes that radiates throughout Home Grown Gladstone Small

Home Grown is immersed with an overflowing energy, unrivalled facilities yet the club has a certain uniqueness. Luke Reed

What a special delight and home from home! I stay here whenever I come to London and their Scale-up events are on the money. John Courtney

We are all crying out for opportunities to bump into other people, to spark ideas off them that make us happier, more fulfilled and more imaginative: Home Grown is a forum for just this creative serendipity. Tas Tasgal

Home Grown is more to me than just my office in London. It’s a community. It’s a place to network with other business people. But most of all it’s got that super friendly and positive vibe that you just can’t wait to get there each time. Neil Thompson

For people worth meeting

Ngan Nguyen

Harry Hortyn

Claire Trachet

Gavin Lacey

Lenna Lou

Georgie Fitzpatrick

Colin Horton

Lewis Malka

Sahil Chopra

James Campbell

Melonie Dando

Dr Abdalla Kablan

Adam Godfrey

Dylan Salamon

Russ Tucker

Daniel Buehler

Dennis Fredrickx

Dillan Gandhi

Leah Fennema Hall

Nic Pillow

Catherine Dupéré

Lucy Aldis (Shaw)

James Higgins

René Carayol

Josh Pollack

Daniel Glazer

Dr Kate Tomas

Duncan Casemore

Animesh Ghosh

Rose Miller

Liall Medina

Freddie Pritchard-Smith

Michelle Carney

jonathan chandler

Peter Hill

Paul Denley

Fiona Glen

John Brown

Justin Byrne

Dayana Nikolova

Matt Dibben

Darren Wareing

James Cooper

Nicole Brule-Walker

Kinson

Simon Hughes

Benji Hassell

Martin Norbury

Jaime Morgan Hitchcock

Jack Murphy

Tash Grossman

Bertie Heyman

Mike West

Sandip Patel

Feyi Fakoya

Andrew Rear

Louise Swanne

Sonja Sofia Schmidt

Huw Crwys-Williams

Chris Huddleston

Nicolas Croix

Jeff Gosling

Janine Mostyn

Phil Lewis

Ravinder Sandhu

Donnie Bachan

Jonathan-Robert Perry

Mark Gillett

Dominic Warman

S Shridhar

David Kitchener

Steve Schrier

Alexi Pittalis

Pavan Patel

Max Li

Alexandra Groszek

Mary Steadman

Ian Tollett

Victoria Proud