bio
i have blended research and campaigning on urban injustice - with a particular focus on youth inequalities - with a career in music, community arts and play. the result is that i am currently general manager of lollard street adventure playground, a 72-year-old urban experiment that was created by children playing on the rubble of the bombed lollard street school in the 1940s, and is still played in to this day.
one of my key foci since being in post has been experimenting with fusing play principles with music access. this has come to fruition in the form of the ‘dream lab’, a practice studio at lollard street with a full backline. the room was named by children and is used by them to jam and improvise together — to play through music. this project has blossomed into a weekly jam club for 9-16 year olds called fREeEPLAY. since 2023 i have also been the musical director of Stockinsound through the charity Certitude. Stockinsound is a choir for adults with SEND based in stockwell, we specialise in 80s and early 2000s mega-hits.
i am driven by a belief that young people claiming common access to land through free play is one of the single most important roads out of the interlocking predicaments of late capitalism. communities of playing people are communities of free people.
my latest publication addresses the crucial role that adventure playgrounds can play in dismantling fascism: read ‘“We are not in the least afraid of ruins”: The antifascist origins of adventure playgrounds in the latest edition of Two Bricks.
i have made and released music for as long as i’ve been able to. i currently lead the folk rock band ‘beckon’, with our second album forthcoming in 2027, and sing as part of trad folk duo ‘skylark’ with eloise dunn. i’ll play any instrument that isn’t reed or brass but my main instruments are voice, piano, guitar, violin and most recently whistle. music is my pension plan and yes i will sing for supper.
musical works
Brooklyn Vegan: ultra-catchy, harmony-forward, and crunchy. (They’re not afraid to drop a flashy guitar solo, either.) Singer/guitarist Faith Taylor has a clear, powerful voice — she really belts it out — and you could imagine Suggested Friends being huge in the early ’90s (or the ’80s). Popular tastes may change hourly, but music like this is pretty evergreen.
Austin Town Hall: ‘The band have just crafted these gems that are singalong worthy and infectious as ever’
also featured on
commissioned compositions & arrangements
Agnus Dei (SAT) - St John the Apostle Whetstone - performed at weekly Eucharists and festivals
Show Me Heaven (SSAA) - St John the Apostle Whetstone - performed February 2025
Zombie (SSAA) - St John the Apostle - performed Advent 2024
theatre credits
2023: what i really think about my husband: thomas hardy and his wives (pinner) - golden goose - musical director
2023: shutters: a lesbian rock opera (brannan) - clapham omnibus - musical director and actor
published written works
book
Taylor F M (2024) Precarious Intimacies: Generation, Rent and the Reproduction of Relationships in London (Bristol: Bristol University Press)
journal articles
Taylor F, Ramsden-Karlese R, & Bonner-Thompson C (2024). Queer social reproduction in the precarious city: replenishing LGBTQ households in London. Gender, Place & Culture, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2024.2332685
Warnock R, Taylor F M & Horton A (2022) Should we pay research participants? Feminist political economy for ethical practices in precarious times. Area, 00, 1– 8. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12790
Taylor F (2021) Desiring space: The affective politics of intimacy in shared rental accommodation, Radical Housing Journal, 3(2), pp. 47-64
Taylor F M (2021) Pushing the closeness: cohabitation and intimacy in Hackney’s private rented sector. AGORA (4)
Taylor, F M (2020) Cumulative precarity: millennial experience and multigenerational cohabitation in Hackney, London. Antipode https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12689
book reviews
Taylor F M (2021) Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent by Priyamvada Gopal, Verso, London, 2019, 624 pp., hardback $45.65 (ISBN 978‐1784784126). The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien https://doi.org/10.1111/cag.12682
Taylor F M (2020) The promise of being free to be: Review of ‘Hotel London’ by Barbara Black. CITY. DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2020.1833545
book chapters
Taylor F M (2024) For relations: political praxis, relationality and contingency in the work of Doreen Massey (in Hall S M & Johns J (eds) Contemporary Economic Geographies. Bristol: Bristol University Press
essays
Taylor F (2026) “We are not in the least afraid of ruins” The antifascist origins of adventure playgrounds. Two Bricks (2)
Taylor F M (2020) The beating heart of capital. Arts of the Working Class, December 16
Taylor F M (2019) Reproduction at the end of humanity: refusing apocalypse and dismantling the threat of the new. Public Seminar, August 28
reports
Berry S, Taylor F (2022) Estate Ballots: Are They Working? Green Group, London Assembly
professional appointments
2025-present: director/general manager - lollard street adventure playground
2023-present: stockwell park community trust/certitude - musical director of Stockinsound choir
2010-present: self employed - musician
2024-2025: st john the apostle, whetstone - director of music
2023-24: E16 community land trust - housing organiser
2021-22: london assembly green group - research and support officer
2020-2022: royal holloway, university of london - lecturer in human geography
2019-2020: brunel, university of london - associate lecturer, global challenges MSc
2016-2020: queen mary, university of london - teaching associate
education
2019: phd human geography, queen mary university of london
2012: mphil multidisciplinary gender studies, cambridge university
2010: history BA, cambridge university (first class hons)