WORKING

How coping with Lockdown showed us a new, better, greener way of living.

When the Covid Pandemic and its consequent Lockdown presented office workers with a daunting challenge, few of us thought it would positively change our lives, and our attitudes about the way we work.

After initial problems that tech solutions managed to solve, working from home allowed many of us a far better work/life balance and even some greater opportunities to take control of our careers.

It also allowed us to consider moving away from the expensive suburbs around capitals and find a better place to live. While those in far away towns and cities finally got a chance to work, remotely, for a big city firm.

At the same time it offered businesses the opportunity to save huge sums on city centre real estate. After all, as productivity had not been affected, why did they need that expensive HQ when people could work from home (or anywhere) so effectively?

While we were all grateful that the expensive, crowded, time consuming and tiresome commute could be avoided, a consequence no one really expected was how massively this would impact on the environment.

If this could be sustained, maybe it would make city life more feasible? Rents would decline, the city would become a quieter greener place to live. And all we needed to do was make the short walk or bike ride to the office. It was the Fifteen Minute City. One where our journeys did not entail burning fossil fuels.

But it’s a small window of opportunity: the business and government leaders need to repurpose the big city centres if they are going to survive as better, less expensive, greener places to live and work, and as they do, then the remote workers outside the major cities will help boost the economies of the long suffering regions.

If these local authorities, central government and business leaders don’t grasp this opportunity, we may well slide back into the old, redundant, polluting ways that existed prior to C19, and we will lose the best chance in decades to change for the better.

Filmed nearly entirely during lock down with a micro crew, using available light and foregoing traditional video interviews, ED&JOHN spent five months putting together a film we hope will both entertain, edify and help crystallise the prospect of a fairer, cleaner, more humane existence that benefits not just the larger cities, but the workforce in general, in both the cities and the regions too.

an ED&JOHN production 2021

Sponsored by theTeam

Narrated by Joe Thompson

2nd Unit DP & Line Producer, Edward Japp

Music by C K Martin @ artlist.io

Production Assistant, Finn McSkimming

Technical Advisors:
Natalie Cotton
Emilie Lashmar
Cliff Ettridge

Assistant cameraman (Portland):
Stefan Verbanov

Special thanks:
Kardo Ayoub
Kat Bailey
Natalie Cotton
Cliff Ettridge
Sophie Isaacs
Sunetta Kiarie
Emilie Lashmar
David Recchia
Bob Weller

Mentoring:
Jamie Neale at Reuben & Jamie

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