Land Talks #2: Fixing Freeholds, Postcode Pains, Cowboy Clashes & More!
🗺️ Where Fresh Thinking Meets Britain’s Oldest Bottleneck
Land is key to economic growth and equality of opportunity, yet in Britain we’ve done almost nothing in decades to unlock our most limited resource. Is it any wonder houses are unaffordable, productivity has stalled and social mobility has flatlined?
Co-founded by Francis Irving, co-creator of TheyWorkForYou, and Henry Morris, founder of the social mobility charity upReach, Land Talks is a series of evenings to inspire and connect high-agency people to reimagine land for everyone’s benefit.
⚡Lightning Talks, Lasting Ideas
Each evening features six sharp, informative and inspirational lightning talks, backed by data, or code. Three of the brilliant speakers and their provocative talks booked for the second evening of Land Talks are:
🤠 Dutton vs Developers: What a Montana Soap Opera Teaches Britain About Land Power by Alys Key
Out in Yellowstone, Kevin Costner’s cowboy John Dutton bends every rule, even snagging the governorship, to stop resorts, pipelines and YIMBY-friendly condos. Alys flips the Hollywood script, asking why the show paint builders and planners as existential threats, and what can that teach British reformers about messaging, trust and winning hearts?
📮 PAF’d Off: How Britain’s Address Data Became a Hidden Tax on Innovation by James O'Malley
Britain’s tangled address data regime quietly blocks thousands of innovations before they even start. James reveals how the Postcode Address File became a costly gatekeeper to a more abundant Britain and what it will take to set this vital data free.
📜 From Freehold to Fairhold: Rewiring Land One Deed at a Time by Alastair Parvin
Unaffordable homes, stalled schemes, rent-fuelled poverty and slow-motion climate collapse – they all stem from one contradiction: we treat homes both as places to live and as assets to make money from. Alastair shows how this contradiction warps every corner of the economy, and sketches-out Fairhold, a new form of land ownership that replaces land speculation with stewardship.
📋 How the Evening Will Run
Arrive from 6.00 p.m.
Three talks plus questions: 6.30 p.m.
Finger food: 7.00 p.m.
Three talks plus questions: 7.45 p.m.
Chat with your fellow groundbreakers as long as you like!
👯 Join the Groundbreakers
Whether you’re an analyst, policy wonk, programmer, policymaker, activist, or simply passionate about a brighter, more abundant future, join us at the second Land Talks to make Britain’s land system work harder for everyone’s benefit. In the meantime, find out more at landtalks.org.