Creative Participation in Place Making

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Connected Communities

Creative Participationin Place-makingAntonia Layard, Jane Milling & Tom Wakeford


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Background

Executive Summary

This project explored how three pioneercommunities in Newcastle, Cumbria and

Bristol use creativity to involve themselves

in place-making and planning practices

after initial struggles to have a voice in the

process. The key empirical findings from

the project illustrate divergent approaches

to creativity in place-making with each

having some success. Sites in Newcastle,

Cumbria and Bristol have been creativelytransformed to reflect the needs and

interests of older and younger people and to

beautify the environment in Stokes Croft.

As anticipated, the project revealed somedifficulties in defining who the communityis, what creativity is and in whose name suchcreativity is practised, particularly when actionis more individualised. However, the project

tentatively suggested that creativity might begreater when groups are less representativeand when decision-makers and funders are lessinvolved. In particular, it raised the possibilitythat when community participants go frombeing outsiders to insiders and no longer haveto struggle so much to be heard they engagein fewer creative practices. In Newcastle,however, where this happened the Elders still

used their creativity to attract new members tothe forum.

This project found that when understoodthrough the experiences of communityparticipants that place-making is broaderand more material than planning practicesas conventionally conceived. In terms ofthe localism agenda this suggests thatparticipation should be broadly understood,facilitating input on the felt environment asmuch as the built environment. Future researchshould be focused on how neighbourhood

creativity and representation can beinterrelated and how participation in thesebroader conceptions of place-making can befacilitated at the local level.

Researchers and Project Partners

Principal Investigator

Professor Antonia Layard

University of Birmingham

Dr Jane MillingUniversity of Exeter

Dr Tom Wakeford

University of Edinburgh

Newcastle Elders Forum

Young Cumbria

Peoples Republic of Stokes Croft

Key words

CreativityRepresentationPlace-makingPlanningLawArts

Public spaceCommunity participation

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3/10C R E A T I V E P A R T I C I P A T I O N I N P L A C E M A K I N G

Creative Participation in Place-making

In this project researchers collaborated withrepresentatives of three communities, theNewcastle Elders Forum, Young Cumbria andthe Peoples Republic of Stokes Croft (PRSC)in Bristol, who are working creatively toimprove their locality. The project consistedof interviews, observations, walking tours anda workshop drawing together contributionsfrom each of the groups. An exhibition, CreativeCitizen, curated by PRSC, was also held inStokes Croft from Jan-Feb 2012. It was the focalpoint for the workshop and attracted manyviewers from the local neighbourhood.

The project asked whether a more innovativeturn to the community (Duffy andHutchinson, 1997) that rejects assumptionsof responsible participation (Paddison et al,2008) and accepted modes of interaction, canengage participants in more meaningful andproductive ways. Creative Participationaimed

to deliver a productive and innovative evidencebase on creativity to understand how localcommunities contribute to place-making andhow these experiences can be harnessed toimprove policy in this field.

As well as exchanging experiences andproviding the empirical data for this research,the participants in the project assembled arange policy proposals. These included that:

1. Communities should be encouraged andsupported to engage both in conventionalconsultation processes and through morecreative mechanisms, including theatre,film, cartoons, music and art;

2. Both elected representatives and employeesin local government should work withcommunities proactively. Officers should

not become a hidden hurdle to reform;

3. Planning use classes should differentiatebetween socially and culturally beneficialuses and those that pursue solely economicaims. Local, place-based concerns should becapable of being material considerationsunder planning law;

4. Outline planning permission shouldincorporate some commitments toprinciples of internal design rather thanfocusing solely on the size and location ofthe development;

5. Criminal laws and planning rules should notbe used to stop bottom-up improvementof areas. Local communities should be ableto adorn their environments throughplanting, art and signage without theconsent of the local authority;

6. Support, both financial and logistical, shouldbe made available to enable communities to

see examples of good practice elsewhere;7. The new neighbourhood planning proposals

need to engage with the multiplicity ofcommunities. There are many publics andcommunities that all need to be engaged,including more marginalised groups. Thiswill require time and resources. Bottom-upinitiatives need support if they are not tobecome simply a base for the most vocal;

8. Conventionally unrepresented groups,particularly socially and economicallydisadvantaged young people, can beengaged through more creative mechanismssuch as music and art. This builds individualconfidence and strengthens links with thelocal community and other related groups;

9. Communities often become most engaged

in positive projects rather than critiquesof existing policies. This requires some

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funding as well as access to expertise. It ismore productive than a negative critiqueof planning applications and the scrutiny ofplanning documents.

These policy findings have been disseminatedonline and through social media and anillustrated newsletter about the project hasbeen disseminated to interested parties.

Creative Localism

One of the key findings in the project wasthe appetite by these community actors forpositive action rather than negative critique,preferring to constructively improve thelocality rather than to review and object toindividual planning applications. There arepossible links here to current activities underthe 2011 Localism Act, which now enablesneighbourhood planning and introduces theright to build. None of these groups had beenworking with neighbourhood planning, inpart due to the scale of the work in Newcastleand Young Cumbria, which was city-wide andcounty-wide respectively. In Stokes Croft inBristol, where a neighbourhood plan mightbe envisaged, frustration with the planningprocess means that a DIY urbanism approachis preferred though PRSC engage with planningprocesses when time and energy permit.

While these are forms of localist interventions,the planning focus of the Localism Act meansthat there is little or no scope for the kind ofactivities these groups have been engaged inwithin neighbourhood planning. The activitiesthese community participants have beenconcerned with; aesthetics, signage, gardening,

health and safety, the availability of rural busservices and the internal design of buildings allcontribute to place-making, yet they cannotbe determined by neighbourhood forums or

parish councils under the Act. Framed almostentirely by planning and property, localism in

this sense is restricted to the built environmentrather than to more subtle artistic and creativeconstructions of the felt environment.

In particular, this project demonstrates themany ways in which place-making goesbeyond planning even though this is how it isoften conceived, particularly by governmentrepresentatives and policymakers. Whileplaces may be physically built or re-built and

so require planning permission and buildingconsents, as this project emphasises, place-making also occurs through other acts. Someacts, which may be quite minor, require (intheory at least) permission either from theproperty owner or from regulatory agencies,for example, to put up signs, to paint murals,to garden or to serve alcohol or food, to runa taxi service and to play loud music (in that

noise pollution laws can be used to limit suchsounds) These acts are all central to every daylife on the street even they are not covered byplanning laws or practices (Valverde 2012).

Localism (under the 2011 Act and associatedpolicy initiatives) does not providepossibilities for micro-local licensing (ofstreet trading or entertainment venues), thelocation or operation of traffic management

devices (such as zebra crossings or trafficlights) or differential noise regulation. In partthis is because of the technical knowledgesaid to underpin these types of regulation,while planning at the neighbourhood level isincreasingly recognised as drawing on bothexpert and local (lay) knowledges. This projectsuggests that if initiatives on localism are toengage communities in positively improving

their environment it is useful to broadenthe range of considerations communityparticipants can determine to includeaesthetic and the construction of the felt

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environment. Each of the groups involved inthis project took a holistic approach to theirpatch and were often involved in negotiatingwith a maze of (ever-changing) local authorityrepresentatives to try to put their pointsof view across. This project suggested thatif localism is to encompass place-makingand not just planning, broader participationshould be both encouraged and facilitated.

Creativity and Materiality

In this project community representativesengaged with locality and place in a highlytangible way, working from the ground upand using the built environment as a fabric.In Newcastle, for example, the Elders Forumwere successful in negotiating for a schemewhere lavatories in libraries, shops and pubscould be used by citizens rather than customers

introducing an illustrative sticker that is fixedto windows. They worked with the Councilto improve the size of font used for signageto make it readable for older people andpersuaded managers of the main shoppingcentre to introduce slip-proof mats to reducethe risk of older people falling, especially whenit was wet. In Stokes Croft in Bristol, guerrillaurbanism tactics were used to acquire verges,

walls and abandoned buildings to creativelyimprove the fabric of the neighbourhood.

As this project reveals, place-making is highlymaterial for community participants. Thesepractices differ from planning practices byplanners and councillors who use site visitsand consultations to collect impressions, dataand opinions that are ultimately recorded indocuments (including plans, permissions and

character assessments). Again this questionsthe relevance of placing planning processesat the heart of place-making initiatives when

for community participants, planning is oftenmore tangential and less every-day withmaterial, creative practices having greaterand often more immediate impact. It alsoemphasises the importance of understandingboth arts-led large scale regeneration (Florida2005, Peck 2005) and everyday creativepractices that are materially constructingplaces (Pinder 2005).

Creativity & Legal Geography

When creative acts are undertaken bynegotiation with property owners and thelocal authority, as for example the NewcastleElders Forum have done, they clearly legallyconstruct the City as well as spatially andsocially. Once persuaded by local theatre andcartoons as well as documents and reports,the property owner has given permission to

put in lavatory signs or slip-proof mats. Thelocal authority takes on Elders concernswhen commissioning new buses or providingadditional housing through its regulatorypractices. This confirms the central premise oflegal geography that sites are spatially, sociallyand legally constructed and that law also helpsto construct the site (Blomley 2004, Cooper1988, Delaney 2011). Legal practices are a

central component of place-making.As this project also illustrated, creativity andparticularly public art (including street art)can also change the way legal decisions aremade even if they are initially undertakenillegally or against the law (Fritsvold 2009).If criminal consequences follow (as they didfor painting the Welcome to Stokes Croftsign and some graffiti) street art may decline.

Where, however, as in Stokes Croft, the streetart continues and is of a high quality, addingaesthetically to the neighbourhood, this may

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persuade decision-makers that they improvethe fabric of the neighbourhood, changing thecontext within which governance decisionsare made. This has led to graffiti being widelyallowed with designated free walls and withthe Arts Council and Bristol City Councilcommissioning new street art. Decision-makers in Bristol accept graffitis cultural valuethroughout the city, including in Stokes Croft.

Both observance and non-observance of thelaw consequently construct the neighbourhood

with legal practices central to ongoingplace-making even if they are not alwaysimmediately evident. While legal aspectsare evident when plans are made or planningpermission is sought there is little provisionhere to take aesthetics or creativity intoaccount. In particular, planning applicationsare determined in accordance with the localplan unless material considerations indicate

otherwise. Yet local or cultural concerns arenot material considerations. Some of theparticipants in this project were highly criticalof this inability to refuse planning permissionsto businesses (including Tescos or Costa Coffee)in their neighbourhoods. This led to a spiriteddiscussion at the workshop and indicated thestrength of some participants feeling to seecultural concerns placed more squarely at the

centre of planning law.

Creative Place-Making &Representation

Planning theory and practice has grappledwith questions of representation for manyyears (Healey 1997, Sandercock 1997, Arnstein1969) as well as the balance between theprivate landowner and the public interest(McAuslan 1980). Representative practicesincluding consultation and a wide range of

participatory techniques are undertaken at thelocal authority scale to source public opinions,particularly in the plan-making process. Thisproject found, however, that these processesdo not always engage local groups partlybecause participants felt that their voices werenot being heard and partly because planningwas just one aspect of place-making, focusingon a single one-off building or project, ratherthan the ongoing construction of city centresor neighbourhoods.

While communities understandings of place-making were broader than planning processes,questions of representation remainedsignificant. One of the tensions posed by theseexamples of DIY place-making is how tonegotiate between individual and collectivesenses of place. This is a live question in thecontext of artistic practices where art maynot attract community-wide consensus. One

persons Banksy may be another personsvandalism.

Understandings of the phenomenology ofplace (Relph 1976, Seamon 1996) are oftenpersonal. Yet people experience places bothsubjectively and as part of a collective ballet.This raises questions about the extent to whichthere might be a collective phenomenologyof place and, if this can be captured, how such

a shared experience might be represented.Such questions of capture are amplifiedwhen it is not just a question of representinghow the place is currently felt, perceived andunderstood but also how it should be. Thiscan call on claims for authenticity or a geniusloci (Norberg-Schulz 1980) which can privilegesome actors over others.

For example, our research found that where

a group acted entirely independently fromexisting local authority procedures withonly limited engagement with other groups

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sometimes the most progress was achievedon the ground. In the case of Stokes Croft, forexample, urban gardening, sign restoration andstreet art or graffiti drew on creative processesto significantly transform the neighbourhood.These changes, however, were not uncontestedparticularly as they were often undertaken byindividuals who worked in the neighbourhoodand had a longstanding stake there but did notlive locally. This caused some concern to localresidents, some of whom were not in favourof the graffiti and did not appreciate all of theartistic installations. In contrast, the NewcastleElders Forum worked more transparently andcollaboratively with Newcastle City Counciland achieved real successes in making thecity more elder-friendly. By becoming moreclosely allied with the Council however andfalling in with more established processes andconsultations, the group gradually became lesscreative, as it had to work less hard to gain the

Councils attention.

This research suggests that the more formallyrepresentative a group becomes, falling inwith established processes, the less scopethere is for creativity. This can produce atension. As in Stokes Croft, the most creativegroups may themselves struggle with beingtruly representative of the neighbourhood

as a whole and may impose their vision of aplace on the neighbourhood. Certainly, allthree organisations had acquired institutionalpersonality. The Peoples Republic of StokesCroft are a Community Interest Company, theNewcastle Elders Forum are a registered charitywhile Young are a Registered Charity and aCompany Limited by Guarantee. In practice,however, this paper documents appeared lessimportant to how the group was governed thanthe ethos of the group. In the case of Young

Cumbria it was also striking that some creativepractices were seen as potentially discouraging

to future funders.This project started from the premise thatconventional processes may not alwaysacknowledge the realities of power nor thedifficulties inherent in formal practiceand deliberative approaches (Brownhilland Carpenter, 2007) and that existingparticipatory mechanisms can excludewomen and young people engaging overly

with gatekeepers in society (Bolt et al, 2010).It found, however, that informal processescan also create informal cultural gatekeepersparticularly in actively creative groups as inStokes Croft. Live questions on the relationshipbetween creativity and representation remain.

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References and external links

Arnstein, Sherry R. A Ladder of CitizenParticipation (1969) 35 JAIP 216-224

Blomley, Nick D. Delaney and R. T. Ford(eds) The Legal Geographies Reader. Oxford:Blackwell, 2001.

Blomley, NickFrom What? to So What?:Law and Geography in Retrospect, pp. 1734in J. Holder and C. Harrison (eds) Law andGeography. Current Legal Issues, Vol 5. Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2003

Bolt, Gideon et alLinking Integration andResidential Segregation (2010) 36Journal ofEthnic and Migration Studies 169-186

Brownhill, S & Carpenter, J Increasingparticipation in planning: Emergentexperiences of the reformed planning systemin England (2007) 22 Planning, Practice &Research 619634

Cooper, Davina Governing Out of Order: Space,

Law and the Politics of Belonging. London: RiversOram Press, 1988

Delaney, David The Spatial, the Legal and the

Pragmatics of World-Making: Nomospheric

InvestigationsRoutledge: Abingdon, 2010

Duffy, Katherine and Hutchinson, Jo Urbanpolicy and the turn to community (1997) 68Town Planning Review347

Florida, RichardThe Rise of the Creative Class:And How It Is Transforming Work, Leisure, and

Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books, 2002

Fritsvold, EricUnder the Law: LegalConsciousness and Radical EnvironmentalActivism (2009) 34 Law & Social Inquiry799824

Healey PatsyCollaborative Planning: Shaping

Places in Fragmented Societies Macmillan:London, 1997

McAuslan, PatrickIdeologies of Planning Law.Oxford: Pergamon, 1980

Norberg-Schulz, C.Genius Loci. Towardsa Phenomenology of Architecture.London:Academy Editions, 1980

Paddison, Ronan et al ResponsibleParticipation and Housing: RestoringDemocratic Theory to the Scene (2008) 23Housing Studies129-147

Peck, JamieStruggling with the creative

class (2005) 29 International Journal of Urbanand Regional Research740770

Pinder, David Visions of the City: Utopianism,

Power and Politics in Twentieth Century

Urbanism. Routledge: Abingdon, 2005

Relph, Edward Place and Placelessness. London:Pion, 1976

Sandercock, LeonieTowards Cosmopolis:Planning for Multicultural Cities. Chichester:John Wiley and Sons, 1997

Seamon, DavidA Singular Impact:Edward Relphs Place and Placelessness(1996) 7 Environmental and ArchitecturalPhenomenology Newsletter5-8

Valverde, MarianaEveryday Law on the Street,Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012

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The Connected Communities

Connected Communities is a cross-CouncilProgramme being led by the AHRC inpartnership with the EPSRC, ESRC, MRC andNERC and a range of external partners. Thecurrent vision for the Programme is:

to mobilise the potential for increasingly inter-

connected, culturally diverse, communities to

enhance participation, prosperity, sustainability,

health & well-being by better connecting

research, stakeholders and communities.

Further details about the Programme can befound on the AHRCs Connected Communitiesweb pages at:

www.ahrc.ac.uk/FundingOpportunities/Pages/

connectedcommunities.aspx
http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/FundingOpportunities/Pages/connectedcommunities.aspxhttp://www.ahrc.ac.uk/FundingOpportunities/Pages/connectedcommunities.aspxhttp://www.ahrc.ac.uk/FundingOpportunities/Pages/connectedcommunities.aspxhttp://www.ahrc.ac.uk/FundingOpportunities/Pages/connectedcommunities.aspx


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www.connectedcommunities.ac.uk

Creative Participation in Place Making

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