Joseph Henry and Pooja Agrawal of Sound Advice on music, inequality, and architecture

As told to Deem

DEEM JOURNAL: Can you introduce yourselves as individuals? What brought you to this work? What makes your heart smile?

SOUND ADVICE: We met at the Greater London Authority and became friends through our shared passion for social equality and music.

Pooja is an architect and planner, and co-host of Sound Advice. She is also the co-founder of the social enterprise Public Practice and has worked in both the public and private sector. She is a fellow at the Institute of Innovation and Public Purpose, has been a mentor at FLUID, and was nominated as Planner’s Woman of Influence in 2018 and 2019. Pooja is smiling most when she is seeding radical change through political diplomacy, whilst humming Little Simz’s “Boss” in her head.

Joseph is a designer and urbanist with a degree and diploma in architecture and a master’s in spatial planning and urban design. He currently works on the regeneration team at the Greater London Authority. As well as co-hosting Sound Advice with Pooja, he is a trustee and company board member of the Russell Maliphant Dance Company, an associate lecturer on the spatial practices course at Central Saint Martins, and an advisor to Theatrum Mundi. Joseph is smiling the most, professionally, while being slightly contrary and argumentative in rooms of power, and when making playlists.

DJ: How has music informed your practice as spatial designers and planners, and how do you utilize it as an audio-visual communication tool?

SA: We were keen from the start that the tone and style for Sound Advice be unique to spatial practice, and the use of music declared our position to contextualize and express our interests and ideas of the city.

The architecture and wider spatial practice landscape that we operate within tends to be self-referential and academic. We wanted to connect with people in a different way, to expand the reference palette and widen the canon. For us, music was the expression and culture that brought us together as friends and therefore it seemed obvious to center it within our first collaboration. It was our hunch that it could help us grow and expand our networks through the discussion of fundamental challenges that we all face, be it the lack of housing for people who need it most or structural racism in our institutions.

The music that we pick, and the associated visuals and lyrics, communicate the excellence and beauty of the work of people of color, often produced on their own terms, and we are striving to create a platform that allows spatial practitioners to be considered on the same terms. Music can help people transcend their immediate experience; there are certain songs that, when we hear them, take us to a different place or emotion. In that way, music starts to become a form of spatial practice. For instance, whenever our audience hears Headie One’s “Both” in the future, it will bring them back to the moment when we were talking about new models for the delivery of affordable housing in our Sound Advice 02 visual podcast for the Architecture Foundation.

DJ: The dominant mode in spatial (and general) knowledge production still very much relies on colonial frameworks entrenched in white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy. Do you see your work with Sound Advice intervening in these systems? If so, how?

SA: Shumi Bose recently described Sound Advice as being “extra-institutional” and, in a way, this is a challenge that we need to accept. We need to be mindful of how we exist and behave. We are both interested in how we can use Sound Advice as a tool to create a new type of institution that works to either undermine or critique existing frameworks by presenting an alternative model—whether that is through redesigning an award show or challenging architectural press by commissioning opinion pieces from people of color.

We also know that intervening in these systems will have to be done through collective action, while being generous to others operating in the space through collaboration and support. We are humble enough to know that we don’t have all the answers; but, by working to create a wider community of practice that is supportive, we might have enough combined energy to make some positive action.

We also need to continue to engage in critique, in theories of change, and in supporting those working on the inside. This is why we created awards for people working to reform institutions, as well as awards for people who are creating their own. Both forms of practice and work are valuable and should be supported.

Sound Advice Awards Advertisement. The Sound Advice Awards was a visual and sonic carnival of an event, showcasing the work of undervalued and alternative spatial practitioners who are pointing a way towards the delivery of a more equitable city. This ad is an example of how Sound Advice aims to shift the tone of how one might think about the “architectural” into something more focused on their interests and the interests of their network. Credit: Sara Lohse.

DJ: Could you tell us a bit more about the Sound Advice Awards? How did you choose the award show as a format for engagement and what was your thinking around the design of the program?

SA: Architecture awards made us uncomfortable; the self-nominating and the transparent motivation that the awards are mainly revenue generators for cash-strapped architectural publications seems to have devalued them. Therefore, the challenge to redesign awards as a cultural experience that has more value, but without having tradition or history to fall back on, was interesting.

One of us recently received an email that we had been “nominated” to enter a “frontier award,” which got us excited. Upon further investigation, we learned that it meant stumping up £300 to apply. We realized what a barrier this was, especially for those who are pushing boundaries without big institutions backing them. Our associated tip on our Instagram page, which read“If you want to diversify your awards, pay us to apply. We ain’t giving you no P,” was paired with Kendrick Lamar’s “Money Trees.”

So there were probably two main motivations: expanding the focus of spatial practice beyond architects and technical solutions without dismissing either, and creating a space for people of color to be celebrated for their work, not just for their contribution to diversity. We also saw that Solange tweeted that we (POC) should“create your own committees, build your own institutions, give your friends awards, award yourself, and be the gold you wanna hold my G’s”—that gave us the confidence that we were doing the right thing.

DJ: Looking back, what did you enjoy most about the experience?

SA: We didn’t expect the awards to create the energy and sense of community that they did. It turned out to be an incredibly emotional event with real tears, and it seemed to lift many from what has been a difficult year. One of the benefits of hosting was that we could see the digital green room throughout the show, and we could see that the experience was creating a community of practice—that was unexpected. We have also had people who watched the show subsequently contact us to thank us for introducing them to individuals whose work they weren’t aware of, and to tell us how the ceremony will influence their practice in the future.

These are examples of the tips that Sound Advice publishes through their social media channels, or that underpin more extended content. This could be an award, essay or panel discussion.

DJ: What are you up to next?

SA: We want to continue to foreground the forms of practice and work of people of color, and push ideas for an alternative vision of the future. To that end, we will be publishing NOW YOU KNOW in spring of 2021. The publication is a collection of fifty reflections from architects and urbanists of color addressing spatial inequality and discrimination in the built environment industry.

So far, Sound Advice has tended not to repeat a format we have used before, which means we are constantly recreating our modes of operation. With a visual podcast, a written article, an awards ceremony, and now a publication, we are not sure what will be next. We will, however, continue to push conversations about things that impact people’s day-to-day existence in the city, speaking in a normalizing way that uses music to bring these issues to life.

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