Returning to my office felt like the Zombie Apocalypse – but I miss creative collaboration – iNews

I went to the office yesterday for the first time in more than five months. It felt unfamiliar, eerie and rather lonely. And that was just on the streets of London.

After all this time, nothing quite prepared me for the desolate nature of our capital city, the boarded-up shops and restaurants, and the general lack of activity andmovement. It was like the Great Depression meeting the Zombie Apocalypse.

Yes, I know thats melodramatic, but while we try to live our day-to-day lives as routinely as possible, and reassure ourselves that things are gradually returning to normal, it comes as something of a shock to experience one of the worlds great hubs of creativity and commerce becalmed in such a way.

My office is in the centre of Soho, and streets that six months ago teemed with people are now pretty deserted: every day feels like Sunday morning. Torpor has replaced hustle and bustle.

The offices are largely empty, and the knock-on effect on retail and hospitality outlets in the neighbourhood is clearly visible. Jeremy King, one of the titans of the capitals restaurant scene, wrote a compelling newspaper article the other day in which he said that there is scarcely a dining establishment in London that is trading solvently.

As more restaurants are destined to go to the wall when furlough ends, he lamented the loss of something he called the conviviality of community, the sense that human beings are happier, more productiveand certainly more creative when they are engaged in collective endeavour.

Soho has always been a place where Britains creative industries have thrived, a district crackling with ideas and vitality. As I walked to work yesterday morning, I wondered what happens to all the creative energy that, in normal times, is generated inside these now unoccupied offices. Does it just disappear into the ether?

There is an alchemy that comes from clever and inventive sorts being engaged in shared labour, exchanging ideas, that simply cannot be replicated over a Zoom call.

In an age where people are atomised and isolated, we urgently need reasons to be together rather than to stay apart. It is difficult to imagine things changing in the near future.

Despite the Governments exhortations for people to get back to work, the evidence from the empty streets and deserted trains is that companies are not compelling their employees to go back to their offices, and the workers are largely staying at their kitchen tables with their earphones in.

As a result, you can only fear for the economic, cultural and social health of our cities.

Some people will have welcomed this period in their lives, giving them a pause to reflect on their relationship with work. It is right that some of the conventions of working life should be challenged. But the move away from offices, should this become a permanent fixture, is not beneficial to any of us, for all sorts of reasons, and only some of them economic.

We are social creatures. We need people around us to fire our imagination, to inspire our creativity. This virus has presented us with many practical challenges, and the intangible loss of what comes from collaboration and aggregation does not get much air time.

I used to complain so much about the streets of central London not being able to cope with the weight of human traffic. I never thought Id miss all that seething humanity. But I do.

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Returning to my office felt like the Zombie Apocalypse - but I miss creative collaboration - iNews

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero