placemaking

As a Creative Producer, Richard collaborates with architects, planners, artists, technologists, serious games developers, communities and audiences to make engaging and impactful experiences in the public realm designed to inform decision-making in urban design programmes and in policy. These experiences make temporary changes to the managed environment, urban and rural, to challenge understandings and expectations about what we can do and what we can affect in local neighbourhoods and gathering places. They aspire to effect permanent change in how we think about living together. To explore a collaboration, contact Richard here….

how Richard thinks about placemaking:

It is useful to think of space as an asset rather than just a place; and to explore how it contributes in a number of ways as a natural, ecological, cultural, social, community and economic asset. It is not just a public space, but a public asset. This allows us to think about how it functions as an asset and how we might nurture it. Placemaking is about working with the relationship between people and spaces as places shared with each other and with other species. It is about the connections between these things and how these function together to create a physical identity specifically informed by social, historical and cultural aspects to form a uniquely valued place that is enacted socially, economically and politically.

Placemaking is about the variety of ways in which a place is used – not a single use. It is about the creative patterns of use over the day, week, seasons and years. It is about the capacity for people and the natural world to thrive together. It therefore draws on an understanding of the place built on the knowledge, experience, skills and tools of those inhabiting, using or invested in the space.

Placemaking seeks to understand the sense of place and contribute to its evolution, respecting local knowledges, sustainability and uses. Placemaking does this by drawing on local assets, knowledges, experience and skills as well as re-imagining the possibilities and potential of the place.

It is about what happens in a space or location, what is there and how it got there.

It is about how those activities and experiences come about; who created them and how.

It is about a tangible sense of place.

We are not designing a space; we are not programming a venue. We are co-curating a sense of place with a variety of tools that draw not only on architecture and urban design, but also, most importantly, narratives that draw on the past(s) and imagined futures. It is about connection, ownership, inclusivity, accessibility and collaboration. It is built on narratives that are strong, appropriate, relevant and timely - narratives drawn from the past(s), present and a series of imagined futures and from the diversity of opinions, attitudes and identities present (or who may inhabit the place).

The process is hyper-local and context-specific, but draws on the use of, and ambitions for, spaces by many differing actors with often conflicting interests - and often from places beyond the local, so that city-wide, regional, national and international influences and pressures are brought to bear.

Some questions arise from this:

Who is identifying what is valued?
Who are we including? and excluding? Is this purposeful?
Whose narratives are we hearing or ignoring?
How are these narratives constructed? Are they informed by traditions or speculating on a future?
Whose assets, inspirations and potentials are we drawing on?
What are our parameters for this?
What do we focus on and how does this relate to our goals?
What takes precedence and why?
How do we make for experiences, not structures?
What type of experiences and for whom?
Who makes decisions? Who designs the solution or outcome?
Are we community-led? or community-responsive? or community-aware?
What do we actually mean by 'co-created', co-produced’, 'collaborative' and 'participatory'?
How do we ensure we are exploring all avenues of possibility?
Who should be ‘in the room’?

When thinking about specific initiatives or projects, it is useful to understand placemaking as a mechanism by which we can build productive sustainable relationships between four constituencies:

the diversity of local communities (there is not one ‘local community’)
those invested in the neighbourhood (ownership and expectations)
those seeking change (either from within or external; developer, policy maker or resident etc)
the local eco-system (a diversity of actors and actants, including other species).

It is also worth thinking about ambition and pragmatism. Placemaking can also be expressed as placeshaping, a term that recognises that things already exist and many will remain; that this is a process over time that does not start with the blank canvas that the word making suggests. Placemaking is a collaborative journey, not a structural outcome. All travellers should be valued, even if not all are taking the same path. It is also critical to note that placemaking is contested and could more usefully be described as place-defending, where some want and need their spaces and places left to them to make, shape and own. Not everyone wants to be a traveller or wants to be shown a path.

Thinking about placemaking in this way helps us together design more effective ways to engage with people and places. It helps us question the assumptions we make about consultation in urban development.

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