Outerspections on Abundance

The issue’s manual is written by the seven members of RESOLVE, the London-based interdisciplinary collective that aims to bring about socio-economic and political change in the built environment through community-focused, process-led work. Below, each principle is written by a different member of the collective, reflecting RESOLVE’s plural approach to abundance. 

To practice in abundance is to consider pluralities of being, thinking, making and acting. Mapping traces and celebrates these pluralities – it is how we engage with communities. When mapping, allow the page to act as a surface for transcribing and translating lived experiences. Use post-it notes or masking-tape to expand the terrain across printed paper borders. Add context in the form of roads and routes drawn from memory.—Lauren-Loïs 

An abundant practice is one that is rooted in many others. Your work does not exist in a silo but as part of a larger cosmos of practitioners who have come before you and those who will surely follow. Unite with your co-conspirators, collaborators and comrades.—Nina Jang 

Circularity in the everyday feels like a doughnut (or torus), where knowledge, materials and resources go through many iterations before making their way back, or setting off on another round of possibilities. Community-focused practice means sharing and (re)distributing ‘what’s mine’ as ‘yours’.—Jana Dardouk 

Seeing abundance in the designed socio-economic, environmental and moral ‘scarcities’ that shape the experiences of marginalised and oppressed people means thinking of the infinite values that lie between definite expanses. This starts by celebrating and resourcing local communities. Stand with them in mutuality against the injustices of systems that deprive rather than serve. This requires not boundless labour but expansive thought. To invoke our collaborator Cody Smith on Angell Town estate in Brixton: ‘With the little we’ve got, they’d think it was a lot.’—Akil Scafe-Smith 

In a team, collective or ecology of practice, generosity, genuine care and support for each other are acts of abundance. Lean on each other, pick each other up and spread the load when your peers experience moments of depletion and burnout. Sharing and swapping skills, knowledge and resources means going beyond just the team you work with to reach your wider networks. It all comes back around.—Katie Matthews 

Working in abundance describes our capacity as practitioners to believe that the story, voices or concepts of our collective labour need to be heard and amplified, regardless of reward. By sharing ideas, opportunities and workload, we hold and sustain our collective dreams.—Ella Barrett 

Embracing abundance means navigating the thread between alternative and opposing truths. That thread gives opportunity for reflection and reinterpretation when framing the experience of communities historically marginalised by the most dominant and oppressive of these truths. Encounters with new communities and geographies help to reposition assumptions and force us to rest in the tensions created by these colliding realities.—Seth Scafe-Smith