A placemaking copywriter who teaches meditation (and how my clients benefit)

I am a copywriter working in architecture, interior design, and placemaking. I’m also a meditation and mindfulness teacher.

This is the story of how I rebranded using biophilia and mindful spaces to bring my two worlds together. Like many freelance copywriters during the pandemic, I was forced to work harder to find projects, so being much clearer with my potential clients about my niche made sense.

Now, having done it, I don’t know why it took me so long! I feel grateful for the ‘long dark night in a thought-cave’ out of which all this emerged. This is what happened to get me here and what I can now offer my clients as a result.

The rise of biophilia

I’d been copywriting for property and placemaking brands for about eight years and over the last four years or so had noticed a massive upsurge in the call to write about ‘biophilia’ and ‘biophilic design’.

Developers were promoting local green spaces, integrated gardens and design with natural materials. They were talking much more about natural light, fresh air and acoustics and about experiential variety in the layout of spaces. And they were talking about wellbeing.

Natural mindfulness

At the same time, I was training as a meditation and mindfulness teacher and realised I had a pull towards natural mindfulness and nature-based meditation. I was honouring things that I think had always been important to me and found an outlet to express them.

I began my meditation teaching by keeping it totally separate from my copywriting business, mistakenly believing that talking about both skill-sets in the same space would confuse my clients. How wrong I was!

Nature connection during lockdown

In the summer of 2020, I used the endless stretches of time that the pandemic gave us to reignite my engagement on LinkedIn and rewrite my profile with total honesty. Suddenly, nature connection, biophilic design and wellbeing in placemaking were everywhere and I was making incredible connections. As lockdown continued, people were talking about getting into nature more and more as society rediscovered its value for staying healthy, balanced and sane.

All the architects I talked to identified a permanent shift in the design of spaces, both private and public, with natural wellbeing central to sustainable and regenerative design in homes, workspace communities, mixed-use developments and the new high street. I had found my calling.

Now I’ve made my meditation teaching my USP when copywriting and content writing for spaces and places, not just because of the importance of biophilia and wellbeing in today’s architecture and design, but because I think mindfulness makes for better storytelling.

Why meditation teachers make excellent writers for spaces & places:

  • Meditation teachers are adept at creating convincing journeys using all the senses – we can immerse and transport people
  • We’re super aware and can focus in on the fine details that many people miss
  • We like to tell stories and often use them with our students to explain meditation theory and practice – as well as turning them into meditations in their own right
  • Many of us recognise that Mother Nature is the ultimate meditation teacher, so we honour the science of biophilia and nature connection
  • We have a handle on the physical and psychological impact of space, light, texture, pattern, shape and line as well as our connection with the natural elements
  • We care about the emotional impact and outcome of our teaching experience on our students as they engage with the internal and external spaces we create for them

Can you see why these skills might add value when marketing a space? Would you like to know more?

Get in touch to find out how my dual skill-set can help your business.

Writing and meditation a blog by Sophie Lacey
Forest bathing for architects and designers

Forest bathing for architects and designers

Alongside writing for property developers, placemaking specialists, architects and designers, I also teach meditation and mindfulness – working primarily with nature-based practices including forest bathing. See this post about the intersection of mindfulness with...

read more
Placemaking lessons from Dorset

Placemaking lessons from Dorset

Who knew Dorset is so full of interesting placemaking experiments? I was there at the end of the summer and came back with some good, bad, and downright ugly impressions. It was a useful moment of reflection on what placemaking and sense of place really mean. King...

read more