Power Out of Restriction (POoR) Collective is a London-based, socially minded design practice that focuses on the development of communities through the elevation of young people. It is formed by Larry Botchway, Shawn Adams, Matt Harvey, Ben Spry and Akmaral Khassen. The collective was born in 2019 with the purpose of getting young voices heard and creating tangible outputs in their local environments. Together with young people, residents and local communities, they create murals, pavilions and architecture. They also develop programmes such as mentoring, training and internships that help empower and upskill young people. Engagement is another driving force in their practice, which is why they prepare consultation events and strategies, host engagement workshops and produce research and reports. In 2023, POoR Collective was awarded the Emerging Design Medal at the 2023 London Design Festival.
This May, POor Collective will participate in the Mayrit Biennial of Architecture and Design in Madrid thanks to an International Festivals and Biennials grant offered by the Architecture, Design and Fashion department at the British Council. We spoke to them ahead of their trip to talk about their practice and their expectations during the biennial.
For any readers who are encountering POoR Collective for the first time, could you please describe the collective and the context it emerged from?
Power Out of Restriction is a design collective we formed in response to the limits we saw in traditional design practice. Too often, spaces are shaped by people who do not fully understand or relate to the communities they are designing for, whether in terms of class, culture, or race. The result is environments that feel imposed rather than genuinely reflective of the people who use them.
Our work is rooted in our lived experience and in the belief that this perspective is essential to design. We challenge top-down approaches and instead champion community-led processes where people actively shape their own environments.
We grew up in social spaces like youth clubs and community settings. These places have long been sites of creativity, support, and identity, yet they are often undervalued and underfunded. They have shaped how we approach design as something that must be accessible, participatory, and grounded in real social contexts.
Ultimately, we are working to redistribute power in design and make it more equitable. We want an industry that is more representative and accountable to the communities it serves.
Your work is centred on upskilling and empowering youth, but it also engages with social, political, or spatial concerns. What questions or themes are driving your current projects?
At the heart of our current work is a simple but urgent question: who gets to decide how we shape the spaces we all share?
We’re driven by the belief that young people, who are often excluded from decision-making, should not only be present in these conversations but also actively shaping spaces. Our projects explore how design can shift power, opening up space for youth voices to influence the social, political, and spatial realities around them.
We’re interested in design as a connector: a tool that links lived experience with the built environment, and bridges communities with the systems that shape their everyday lives. Through this, we ask: what does it mean to see yourself reflected in your surroundings? What changes when young people recognise their identity, culture, and ideas in the spaces they inhabit?
There’s also an ongoing exploration of symbols, like flags, as markers of identity, belonging, and collective voice. How can these ideas be reinterpreted spatially? How can they become part of the environments we move through, not just something we observe from a distance?
Ultimately, our work is about empowerment. It’s about creating the conditions for young people to not just imagine alternative futures, but to actively participate in building them.
When working in public or semi-public spaces, what role does experimentation or risk play in your process?
Experimentation and risk are central to how we work in public spaces. We actively encourage play as a way of opening up participation, creating moments where people feel comfortable to explore, connect, and contribute in unexpected ways.
Our process embraces the possibility of things not working the first time. We are open to failed tests and see them as a valuable part of learning rather than something to avoid. This mindset allows us to stay responsive and evolve ideas in real time.
We often experiment through co-design, using live testing and iteration as part of the outcome itself. Instead of presenting fixed solutions, we create opportunities to try, observe, and adapt with the people we are working with. In this way, risk becomes a tool for discovery, helping us build more meaningful and grounded responses to the spaces we engage with.
Thinking about your participation during the Mayrit Biennial, how does working at the scale of a festival which is time-limited impact your choices when designing a project?
Working within the time-limited context of the Mayrit Biennial pushes us to be both intentional and responsive in our design choices. It sharpens our focus on creating something that can hold an immediate, impactful presence while also carrying meaning beyond its short lifespan.
For this project, upcycling has been an important approach, not just materially but conceptually. It reflects our ongoing experience with temporary interventions and prompts us to think carefully about the afterlife. What happens once the festival ends? What stories, relationships, or materials continue on?
The festival format also creates an opportunity to respond to the present moment. Themes around the politics of flags and questions of identity feel particularly urgent right now, and the temporary nature of the event allows us to engage with these conversations in a direct and timely way.
At the same time, being part of a wider programme encourages us to think about how our work sits alongside others. It has made us more reflective about the broader narratives and subject matter being explored, and how our contribution can both complement and challenge the wider discourse.
The Mayrit Biennial 2026 will explore the idea of (Super)Models, which can be defined as mechanisms that not only reflect reality but also produce it. How do you feel this idea dialogues with the work that Poor Collective produces?
The idea of (Super)Models strongly resonates with our practice. For us, the starting point is often the prototype, which acts as a disruptor to established models. It operates in a space of resistance, allowing us to question and unsettle the systems that shape how space, identity, and power are organised.
Within The Weight of Identity, we have been particularly interested in the flag as a (Super)Model. Traditionally, flags are powerful mechanisms that produce and reinforce ideas of territory, belonging, and identity, often carrying layered histories of pride as well as conflict and exclusion. In this sense, they do not just represent these ideas, but actively shape how they are understood and lived.
What kinds of experiences or conversations do you hope the work you create during Mayrit Biennial will generate with Madrid’s audiences?
We hope the work creates a moment of reflection on community and a shared sense of unity. By bringing people together within the space, it becomes an invitation to pause and consider what it means to collectively occupy and shape our environments.
The flag plays an important role in this. As people stand beneath it, it shifts from being a static object to something lived and embodied, becoming a symbol of collective presence. It opens up conversations around identity, belonging, and the power of coming together in a public space.
Ultimately, we want to create an experience that feels both personal and collective, where people can connect with each other and reflect on the role they play within their communities.