In early July at Box Park in Wembley, built environment stakeholders in all their forms convened for the annual Festival of Place. Joining in discussions to unpack how we can collectively work together to make our places thrive.
Footwork hosted a panel of unlikely allies to discuss the conundrum, ‘People and pounds - is there a win-win in backing places to thrive?’. Communities and investors alike count the cost of the social damage done by poor regeneration, so is there a win-win – an approach to development that delivers strong social as well as financial returns?
Event speakers
Danie Gilbert of Good Shepherd Studiosand We Flock CIC began by generously telling her story of community-led development. Leaving the room with a clear vision of both the social benefits and the need to centre people within the machine of regeneration.
Theo Michell, of COO of Bywater Properties reflected on the uplifing nature of Danie's story, whilst also responding with frustration that such positive work is often met with resistance.
Danie in her talk mentioned “gems” in her Council who are constantly looking out for additional spaces and opportunities for We Flock CIC, and who are actively engaged with and advocate for community groups. Claire Bennie, Director of Municipal, built on this theme of council involvement to ask, “how can the public sector actually enable what Danie is talking about?”. How can we grow and develop more great public sector leaders and encourage leaders to take risks?
So, we know that the relationship between a community innovator and their local council needs to be successful to help enable places to thrive, but what about the viability of social return? There is no simple answer, but discussions ranged from struggles of scale, the rewarding of risk taking and the ultimate constraints of a market that prioritises financial return.
Panellists and audience, during the discussion
So, a win-win, what could it look like?
This question led panellists to reflect on what development should actually look like. Could the community be the client and set briefs? If communities could set briefs then developers would act in accordance with the community's wishes.
We could rewrite the development playbook, as Adewole Ademolake, founder of A’lake mentioned, what would development as a public service look like? For example, a site survey could be so much more than simply mapping out a site, what about speaking to local businesses, discovering the cultural activity in the place, the art, the food, the music, the individual educational orgs - a cultural audit of a site.
With such a community-focused session, the room was left brimming with new ideas and a whole host of questions - what would development look like with communities as clients?
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