Nexus Azeo Perspective · Arnaud Compas
By the time a change in London acquires a name, somebody has usually been working on it for a while.
A restaurant has adjusted its offer. A buyer has given an unfamiliar producer a place on the list. A shopkeeper has noticed that customers are coming for something different. These decisions can look small from outside. Together, they are part of how a city changes.
London's established attractions help explain why people come. Its continuing interest depends on what is developing beneath that reputation. Somewhere, people are committing time, money and knowledge to something whose audience is still taking shape.
That is the stage I find most revealing.
A person with vision has an idea of what they want to build. Making it real brings that idea into contact with other people's habits, expectations and willingness to spend. The response may confirm part of the original ambition and change another part completely.
In wine, a producer may begin with the vineyard and the choices made in the cellar. A buyer needs to understand where the wine belongs on a list. The person ordering it may be looking for pleasure, familiarity, a recommendation or something they have never tasted before.
The work involves finding a relationship between those perspectives. A wine's character can remain the same while the occasion, explanation and route through which someone encounters it change considerably.
London gives this process many settings. A product can be familiar within one community, become a discovery elsewhere and find a wider audience through a restaurant or retailer. What looks like a new trend from one position may have a long history from another.
Deptford Market makes that particularly tangible. Its offer includes fresh fish, fruit, vegetables and foods from different culinary traditions. There is already considerable knowledge in the buying, preparation and everyday use of those ingredients. Whether something becomes newly visible depends partly on who encounters it and how it is presented. [1]
Attention can change while the ingredient itself barely changes.
The same is true of place. A street serves people with established routines, newcomers discovering the neighbourhood and visitors making a specific journey. A business learns through those encounters. Changing an opening time, a portion size or a wine selection may reveal more about its developing audience than the language used to describe the area.
Richmond and Lewisham offer different settings for these questions. In each, I would want to understand what brings people back, what they seek elsewhere and which parts of daily life they choose to give more attention to. Borough averages provide context. The interesting movement takes place within the decisions.
There is a practical foundation beneath experimentation. Somebody needs a kitchen, a studio, a team or enough continuity to develop the work. City Hall's funding decision covering cultural activity from 2025 to 2028 included support towards Acme's purchase of the Propeller Factory in Lewisham, with the aim of securing permanent affordable artists' workspace. That is one concrete example of investment in the conditions from which future work can emerge. [2]
The relationship with visibility matters here. An established attraction can generate attention long after the investment that created it. Work being developed today may produce little immediate evidence of its eventual reach. Both belong to the same city, but they operate on different timescales.
This is why anticipation requires some patience. Published data can establish the scale and direction of a change. Close observation can reveal an adjustment while it is still too small to appear clearly in an aggregate. Each helps test the other. A compelling anecdote becomes more useful when we can see whether it is recurring.
I would pay particular attention to the questions people begin asking. What would make them try something unfamiliar? What explanation gives them confidence? When do they want to know more, and when are they happy to trust someone else's judgement?
Those questions are relevant to a supermarket purchase, a wine list and a carefully hosted dinner. The amount spent gives only part of the picture. What somebody seeks from the encounter helps explain the rest.
For Made to Taste, this creates a clear purpose: bring people close enough to the work for their own interest to develop. A producer's choice, a chef's treatment of an ingredient or a conversation around the table can become a point of entry. The response belongs to the guest.
At the scale of London, countless encounters of this kind form part of the city's renewal. Ideas are introduced, understood, adjusted and taken somewhere else. Some remain local. Others acquire an audience far beyond their original setting.
London's future interest is being assembled through those commitments now. To understand what it might become, I would begin with the person making a choice before its value is obvious to everyone else—and ask what they are trying to make possible.