so when I was a child the fave my
favorite game to play was called would
you rather in our family we’d ask each
other the most impossible questions they
would things like we do more than half
jam ugly nose or custard in years later
when I realized I was in a real life
game of would you rather because the gay
games that we played as a child they
always made us think up two of the most
impossible or unpleasant options and we
got to each other squirm as we decide
which one of these options with the
least worst so thirty years later
working as a builder on building sites I
was chatting with one of my friends
who’s also a builder and she was telling
me about the sexism that she so often
receives on site she told me about this
one instant where a new instance where a
new guy came up to her inside and said
either boss’s wife it might be safer if
you waited at the site hut for him he’d
assumed that she was the boss’s wife
because why else would a woman be on a
building site we talked about this and
we talked about how we do so much work
just to try and fit in to be one of the
guys and sometimes we just don’t want to
be noticed I know that I pushed myself
harder I’ve done the heaviest work even
at the risk of sometimes hurting my back
to make sure that I could leave one of
the guys I’m not a man I do look a
little bit like one and things like the
other day when there was a competition
was a competition for how much can you
and it was one day at lunch time so
there’s no eating competitions this day
and no one was been talking we were
sitting around in this pretty grubby
sight Hut and on the table there were
three newspapers and and each one of
these newspapers that were picked there
was a picture of a naked woman of one of
those there was the headline pretty
question mark I turned to the guy next
to me and said he’s been amazing how we
could no longer have pictures of naked
women on calendars on building site
office walls we’ll just have them all
over the table instead and admittedly he
was kind of involved in something else
someone took it down that was just
before you arrived and I realized at
that point that my real life game of
would you rather I’d ask myself would I
rather do this work of fitting in would
it look like I’d done quite a good job
at or would I rather speak my truth but
risk being ostracized and it was since
that time now I’ve got to say that this
talk it’s not an expose of sexist Dave
the Builder and how Dave the Builder
doesn’t realize how sexist he really is
what this talk is about is about a
culture that’s pervasive in the building
industry and that all the better part of
so I work on small eco building sites
and I’ve also worked for some larger
house building firms and since that day
I’ve thought about this culture that I’m
part of and there’s one word that keeps
coming back to me and that word is
disconnection there’s a disconnection
from our feelings if we share our
feelings on a building site it’s a sign
of weakness feelings have the potential
to derail this Alinea productive
approach to work feelings cause chaos
but it’s in the in the UK male
construction workers have the highest
potential risk of suicide than in any
other industry 3.7 times higher than the
national average there’s a disconnection
from our bodies the man sir that I was
telling myself work is hard be tough
don’t stop carry on because my body is a
machine and as a disconnection from the
sense of self-worth I see this mostly on
the larger house building sites when
we’re building our houses factory-style
so the main project is broken down into
its components and one set of carpenters
they’ll just do one job for example
they’ll be putting up stud walls when
they’ve completed this done water on
there’s no investment in a well-rounded
workforce and there’s no connection for
as individuals until to the final
product and it’s also on these sites
that I see a disconnection from the
earth and I don’t think we can
underestimate the impact of humanity
when I connected this to nature
originally our houses were built from
the natural materials in the local area
but with the refining of building
products we’re moving these materials
further and further away from their
natural product but we’re refining them
for predictability and standardization
and for building as many cheap houses as
possible and while this happens we lose
those skills in the knowledge of the
unpredictable natural materials and as a
disconnection from pleasure I’m not
saying there’s no fun on a building site
I’ve had a lot of fun on a building site
but that fun tends to be despite the
work not part of it so we did those
extended tea breaks or the times and we
occasionally get to go home early
so my way that this sense of
disconnection is
it’s solely part of the building
industry in some of you may have had
those times when you’ve got up in the
morning and you’ve cut off part of
yourself because you’re just going to go
to work and you’ve got to get the job
done that’s what’s expected of us that’s
what’s expected of us in the dominant
ideologies of their social and economic
systems that we work with in this
connection is a trademark of the white
supremacist culture it’s embedded within
a capitalist economy and it’s part of
our patriarchy so I like this quote by
Terence reel Tarrant meal describes the
patriarchy as the dynamic between those
qualities deemed masculine and those
feminine in which half of our human
traits are exalted and the other half
are devalued during a building industry
when 98% of the people who were working
in it have been socialized since they
were young boys to celebrate all those
qualities of logic and strength and
aggression and dominance and at the same
time they’ve been taught to suppress any
sensitivity and caring and intuition and
gentleness I don’t think it’s surprising
that our building industry is an extreme
version of patriarchal capitalism pet
the patriarchy supports one side of
ourselves the macho the masculine side
and it’s almost as if we’re not trusted
to do the work on a building site unless
we’re going to use big wipes and tough
tape measures just as Terence reel says
them these equalities are masculine and
feminine and all of us regardless of the
gender that we identify as we have these
inside us I’ve seen myself get a lot
more matching my masculine side come out
much more on building sites and that’s
why Susan Ballou dance days
you can’t change the world for women
simply by inserting female faces onto an
unchanged system of social and economic
power or actually refers to Charlotte
bunch who in the 1990s said you can’t
just add women and stir so what this
leading what this leads to when we leave
half of ourselves at home is what I’m
seeing on the building sites which is
aggression is the go-to way to resolve
conflict or differences of opinion it
leads to our housing stock which is of
bad quality and not built to be
long-lasting I don’t think we can expect
our houses to be of good quality
when the people who are building them
aren’t looked after Iran encouraged to
do the work of looking after themselves
it’s leading to unchecked prejudices of
racism and sexism and homophobia and is
leading to dishonesty it was a while
back that I was working with a group of
guys and we were putting in rigid foam
insulation then if any of you who have
worked with this before but if you have
you will know that this is such an
unpleasant material to work with so when
if you’ve been using it for a long time
and especially in confined spaces it’s
that your skins really irritate and get
itchy so these guys I was talking to
they’ve been on another site and they’ve
been putting in this insulation solidly
for the last two weeks and another load
of insulation arrived at delivery
on-site so they could continue doing
that job in other houses for the
following two weeks so at that point
they made the decision they made the
decision to leave a whole section of
each house with no insulation in it
whatsoever and they teamed up with the
guys who were plaster boarding over so
it will be covered over before anyone
saw they did insulate one section of the
house that’s the section that the
building inspectors were going to see
these guys were doing the absolute
minimum they could get away with and I
can’t blame him considering the work in
the conditions that they were under so
this rational and logical and
disconnected approach that we have to
try and pushes towards productivity
isn’t working we’ve got low levels of
mental well-being on-site and the work
that is being done it’s not being done
well so what if instead of this
disconnection from our bodies in
pleasure
we had building sites that centered joy
and ease in all of the work that we do
the capitalism says that if it’s not
hard it’s not work if we’re going to
spend their whole days centering
joyfulness and playfulness then there’s
going to be no work that actually gets
done but that’s the line it will get
done and it will get done better and
what if instead of a disconnection for
meaning that’s coming from chasing these
tight deadlines and squeezing ourselves
into limited budgets which we can see
leads to substandard housing stock and
the time and attention that it takes to
build a house and we use natural
materials that are compatible with the
ecosystems and what if and what if
[Music]
instead and what if instead of these
pent-up feelings of emotions which lead
to violence and aggression and the
bullying that I see on-site and what if
instead of that we encourage people to
speak their truth and accepted all of
the mistakes in the learning that
along with that and I think that we can
create a building site that wrestles
with all those ingrained values that
puts profitability and speed and
efficiency above everything else and in
its place we have a building site that
values generosity and honesty and truth
and I know that it’s not necessarily
going to be easy to do this I’ve created
100 ways that will help us along the way
so I do spire to do this by a piece of
writing by Gen Ambrose who wrote a
hundred ways to make more money and I
definitely encourage you to look this up
so these 100 ways to create now to get
this building site when I got to number
100 I realized that could easily be 104
I’m just going to go through a few of
those with you today the first one’s
number one stretch so this sounds simple
but stretching has got hidden depths
because in a culture where our bodies
are disposable if we bring back the
focus to it and before we get into pain
we notice how our bodies feel and we
make time to stretch throughout the day
that’s a radical act and at the same
time it’s our bodies that hold all of
the reactions to the emotions that
happen to us throughout the day all of
the disappointment and fear it’s it’s
somewhere in our bodies so if we stretch
that can start to release those we can
work through it what I’m really excited
about is number 72
a comfortable even luxurious site Hut
super comfy chairs a clean fridge
somewhere to hang the clothes to get dry
so where to get to know the people that
I’m working with and when difficulties
and difference of differences of opinion
do come up we can number 76 we can
understand that defensiveness comes from
our own fears so we can work through
these difficulties and then we can build
really good quality housing we can put
the energy into that and we can do that
in number three comfortable timeframes
with plenty of wiggle room and I know
it’s not going to be easy when there’s
multi-billion pound projects at one end
and then at the other end we’ve got
Uncle Pete who’s doing up your extension
but we need to experiment we need to
start now
I don’t know all the answers but I know
that it’s time to begin and I know that
if we number six actively support other
businesses with the similar values that
that’s the beginning of a social
movement and change will happen and then
I can promise you that number 100 we can
be prepared for the building site to be
a transformative place for everyone
thank you [Applause]
favorite game to play was called would
you rather in our family we’d ask each
other the most impossible questions they
would things like we do more than half
jam ugly nose or custard in years later
when I realized I was in a real life
game of would you rather because the gay
games that we played as a child they
always made us think up two of the most
impossible or unpleasant options and we
got to each other squirm as we decide
which one of these options with the
least worst so thirty years later
working as a builder on building sites I
was chatting with one of my friends
who’s also a builder and she was telling
me about the sexism that she so often
receives on site she told me about this
one instant where a new instance where a
new guy came up to her inside and said
either boss’s wife it might be safer if
you waited at the site hut for him he’d
assumed that she was the boss’s wife
because why else would a woman be on a
building site we talked about this and
we talked about how we do so much work
just to try and fit in to be one of the
guys and sometimes we just don’t want to
be noticed I know that I pushed myself
harder I’ve done the heaviest work even
at the risk of sometimes hurting my back
to make sure that I could leave one of
the guys I’m not a man I do look a
little bit like one and things like the
other day when there was a competition
was a competition for how much can you
and it was one day at lunch time so
there’s no eating competitions this day
and no one was been talking we were
sitting around in this pretty grubby
sight Hut and on the table there were
three newspapers and and each one of
these newspapers that were picked there
was a picture of a naked woman of one of
those there was the headline pretty
question mark I turned to the guy next
to me and said he’s been amazing how we
could no longer have pictures of naked
women on calendars on building site
office walls we’ll just have them all
over the table instead and admittedly he
was kind of involved in something else
someone took it down that was just
before you arrived and I realized at
that point that my real life game of
would you rather I’d ask myself would I
rather do this work of fitting in would
it look like I’d done quite a good job
at or would I rather speak my truth but
risk being ostracized and it was since
that time now I’ve got to say that this
talk it’s not an expose of sexist Dave
the Builder and how Dave the Builder
doesn’t realize how sexist he really is
what this talk is about is about a
culture that’s pervasive in the building
industry and that all the better part of
so I work on small eco building sites
and I’ve also worked for some larger
house building firms and since that day
I’ve thought about this culture that I’m
part of and there’s one word that keeps
coming back to me and that word is
disconnection there’s a disconnection
from our feelings if we share our
feelings on a building site it’s a sign
of weakness feelings have the potential
to derail this Alinea productive
approach to work feelings cause chaos
but it’s in the in the UK male
construction workers have the highest
potential risk of suicide than in any
other industry 3.7 times higher than the
national average there’s a disconnection
from our bodies the man sir that I was
telling myself work is hard be tough
don’t stop carry on because my body is a
machine and as a disconnection from the
sense of self-worth I see this mostly on
the larger house building sites when
we’re building our houses factory-style
so the main project is broken down into
its components and one set of carpenters
they’ll just do one job for example
they’ll be putting up stud walls when
they’ve completed this done water on
there’s no investment in a well-rounded
workforce and there’s no connection for
as individuals until to the final
product and it’s also on these sites
that I see a disconnection from the
earth and I don’t think we can
underestimate the impact of humanity
when I connected this to nature
originally our houses were built from
the natural materials in the local area
but with the refining of building
products we’re moving these materials
further and further away from their
natural product but we’re refining them
for predictability and standardization
and for building as many cheap houses as
possible and while this happens we lose
those skills in the knowledge of the
unpredictable natural materials and as a
disconnection from pleasure I’m not
saying there’s no fun on a building site
I’ve had a lot of fun on a building site
but that fun tends to be despite the
work not part of it so we did those
extended tea breaks or the times and we
occasionally get to go home early
so my way that this sense of
disconnection is
it’s solely part of the building
industry in some of you may have had
those times when you’ve got up in the
morning and you’ve cut off part of
yourself because you’re just going to go
to work and you’ve got to get the job
done that’s what’s expected of us that’s
what’s expected of us in the dominant
ideologies of their social and economic
systems that we work with in this
connection is a trademark of the white
supremacist culture it’s embedded within
a capitalist economy and it’s part of
our patriarchy so I like this quote by
Terence reel Tarrant meal describes the
patriarchy as the dynamic between those
qualities deemed masculine and those
feminine in which half of our human
traits are exalted and the other half
are devalued during a building industry
when 98% of the people who were working
in it have been socialized since they
were young boys to celebrate all those
qualities of logic and strength and
aggression and dominance and at the same
time they’ve been taught to suppress any
sensitivity and caring and intuition and
gentleness I don’t think it’s surprising
that our building industry is an extreme
version of patriarchal capitalism pet
the patriarchy supports one side of
ourselves the macho the masculine side
and it’s almost as if we’re not trusted
to do the work on a building site unless
we’re going to use big wipes and tough
tape measures just as Terence reel says
them these equalities are masculine and
feminine and all of us regardless of the
gender that we identify as we have these
inside us I’ve seen myself get a lot
more matching my masculine side come out
much more on building sites and that’s
why Susan Ballou dance days
you can’t change the world for women
simply by inserting female faces onto an
unchanged system of social and economic
power or actually refers to Charlotte
bunch who in the 1990s said you can’t
just add women and stir so what this
leading what this leads to when we leave
half of ourselves at home is what I’m
seeing on the building sites which is
aggression is the go-to way to resolve
conflict or differences of opinion it
leads to our housing stock which is of
bad quality and not built to be
long-lasting I don’t think we can expect
our houses to be of good quality
when the people who are building them
aren’t looked after Iran encouraged to
do the work of looking after themselves
it’s leading to unchecked prejudices of
racism and sexism and homophobia and is
leading to dishonesty it was a while
back that I was working with a group of
guys and we were putting in rigid foam
insulation then if any of you who have
worked with this before but if you have
you will know that this is such an
unpleasant material to work with so when
if you’ve been using it for a long time
and especially in confined spaces it’s
that your skins really irritate and get
itchy so these guys I was talking to
they’ve been on another site and they’ve
been putting in this insulation solidly
for the last two weeks and another load
of insulation arrived at delivery
on-site so they could continue doing
that job in other houses for the
following two weeks so at that point
they made the decision they made the
decision to leave a whole section of
each house with no insulation in it
whatsoever and they teamed up with the
guys who were plaster boarding over so
it will be covered over before anyone
saw they did insulate one section of the
house that’s the section that the
building inspectors were going to see
these guys were doing the absolute
minimum they could get away with and I
can’t blame him considering the work in
the conditions that they were under so
this rational and logical and
disconnected approach that we have to
try and pushes towards productivity
isn’t working we’ve got low levels of
mental well-being on-site and the work
that is being done it’s not being done
well so what if instead of this
disconnection from our bodies in
pleasure
we had building sites that centered joy
and ease in all of the work that we do
the capitalism says that if it’s not
hard it’s not work if we’re going to
spend their whole days centering
joyfulness and playfulness then there’s
going to be no work that actually gets
done but that’s the line it will get
done and it will get done better and
what if instead of a disconnection for
meaning that’s coming from chasing these
tight deadlines and squeezing ourselves
into limited budgets which we can see
leads to substandard housing stock and
the time and attention that it takes to
build a house and we use natural
materials that are compatible with the
ecosystems and what if and what if
[Music]
instead and what if instead of these
pent-up feelings of emotions which lead
to violence and aggression and the
bullying that I see on-site and what if
instead of that we encourage people to
speak their truth and accepted all of
the mistakes in the learning that
along with that and I think that we can
create a building site that wrestles
with all those ingrained values that
puts profitability and speed and
efficiency above everything else and in
its place we have a building site that
values generosity and honesty and truth
and I know that it’s not necessarily
going to be easy to do this I’ve created
100 ways that will help us along the way
so I do spire to do this by a piece of
writing by Gen Ambrose who wrote a
hundred ways to make more money and I
definitely encourage you to look this up
so these 100 ways to create now to get
this building site when I got to number
100 I realized that could easily be 104
I’m just going to go through a few of
those with you today the first one’s
number one stretch so this sounds simple
but stretching has got hidden depths
because in a culture where our bodies
are disposable if we bring back the
focus to it and before we get into pain
we notice how our bodies feel and we
make time to stretch throughout the day
that’s a radical act and at the same
time it’s our bodies that hold all of
the reactions to the emotions that
happen to us throughout the day all of
the disappointment and fear it’s it’s
somewhere in our bodies so if we stretch
that can start to release those we can
work through it what I’m really excited
about is number 72
a comfortable even luxurious site Hut
super comfy chairs a clean fridge
somewhere to hang the clothes to get dry
so where to get to know the people that
I’m working with and when difficulties
and difference of differences of opinion
do come up we can number 76 we can
understand that defensiveness comes from
our own fears so we can work through
these difficulties and then we can build
really good quality housing we can put
the energy into that and we can do that
in number three comfortable timeframes
with plenty of wiggle room and I know
it’s not going to be easy when there’s
multi-billion pound projects at one end
and then at the other end we’ve got
Uncle Pete who’s doing up your extension
but we need to experiment we need to
start now
I don’t know all the answers but I know
that it’s time to begin and I know that
if we number six actively support other
businesses with the similar values that
that’s the beginning of a social
movement and change will happen and then
I can promise you that number 100 we can
be prepared for the building site to be
a transformative place for everyone
thank you [Applause]
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