PoOR Collective

Power Out of Restriction (POoR Collective) is a socially minded design practice focused on developing communities by elevating young people. Based in London, the collective combines architecture, design, and education to create projects that are as collaborative as they are impactful.

Its core team brings together diverse expertise. Architects Shawn Adams, Larry Botchway, and Ben Spry connect design with social purpose through teaching, co-design, and public engagement. Artist and architectural designer Akmaral Khassen supports with murals, public art, and community installations. Director of Operations Matt Harvey ensures projects are financially sustainable while championing opportunities for young people from underrepresented backgrounds.

Through workshops, public art, built projects, and education programmes, POoR creates spaces where creativity and community thrive. Their work demonstrates how design can be a tool for empowerment and change.

How do you use creativity as a tool for access?

We use a programme we call co-design, where we work with young people/members of communities to draw with them and sketch with them. We do that primarily because we believe that everyone is an expert in their own experience, and therefore, they have a right to engage in how they shape their built environments. So we use creative workshops to give them a seat at the table to make sure their voices are heard. It’s about giving people agency and ownership to create something.

How do you teach young people to see creativity as power?

By getting them to actually create tangible things in their environment. By creating things that are tangible, they can see the impact that creativity can actually have on their local spaces, homes, parks and built environments.

How do you design with, not just for, a community?

By actually paying attention to their suggestions and interests. One example is recognising that not everybody recognises safe spaces in the same way. So a car park to most is just a car park, but to some young people it’s a comfortable place that they can hang out without people bothering them, but also there is a security guard around the corner who is giving them a sense of security and a sense of protection, so it’s really paying attention to the fact that not everyone views the same things in the same way, and actually giving those people the space to design with the support we’re able to provide.

What colour do you associate with possibility?

Green - and there are a number of different reasons why. In the finance world, green = positive cash flow. Positive cash flow allows you the opportunity to do many things. And in another sense, green is the colour that is associated with sustainability, and if we can build a sustainable environment, it means that we don’t have to worry so much about the future.

How can colour be used to raise awareness?

A really good way that colour can be used to raise awareness is by doing something that all good and successful art does: subverting the status quo and challenging people’s assumptions about things, while also making people feel like they can relate to it and feel less alone. Use of colour is a really important part of that. The more you can use colour to draw attention to beautiful things, or to signify togetherness and change, the more you can subvert the status quo and help make people feel less alone.