An insightful and inspiring couple of days spent at the 'Developing Future City Plan Makers’ conference and bootcamp with Culture Central at STEAMhouse and The Old Print Works led by the wonderful Dr Cara Courage SFIPM FRSA, Cara Pickering and Dr. Anthony Ruck.
It was amazing to have such rich and meaningful discussions around the topic of placemaking, challenging thoughts and learning from others about how things can be improved for the better.
Some of my key takeaways from the day (too many to include on here though!);
-Communication and honesty is key in order to stay on the same page and keep up momentum. Sharing knowledge and language terms is needed for this.
-Work in depth first before scaling up. We can't afford to spread fragile systems too thinly or working on too many temporary projects that get ripped away from communities.
-A bottom up/ grassroots approach to placemaking is more successful and needs to be prioritised.
-Collaborations between residents, communities, policy makers, funders and private sector companies are ALL essential for placemaking.
-The in-between spaces near where we live such as road underpasses and street corners are important places to consider for placemaking and public art.
-Partnerships with businesses that are often considered outside of 'culture' such as shops and cafes come with a lot of benefits and are often very on board to collaborate.
-Considerations over where and how we converse with the communities should be challenged. Who is in the room and do we need to deconstruct the concept of a room itself and form more creative ways of collecting information?
-Is culture just a real estate business? How can we realign people at the core of what is often a money making industry and value the culture that already exists.
The presentations from speakers who included Rachel Smith, Lorraine Cox FRSA, Anna Kime, Nicola Headlam, Sarah Kennedy, James Hoskinson MSc MRTPI, Keith Shayaam-Smith, Stephen Bennett, Amahra Spence amongst others, left me truly inspired and left me asking questions about how we as Pickle Illustration can adapt our practice in response to the themes discussed,
I look forward to attending more events like this in the future!
