‘Making Places’ Community Placemaking
Working across Scotland to design, develop and deliver community-led placemaking programmes which seek to identify partnerships and support the growth and building of more resilient communities
Over a five year period our team worked across Scotland on a series of placemaking workshops, charrettes and engagement programmes which connected community members and organisations to local authorities at the outset of the development of new public buildings and high street activation projects. The aim of the workshops was to uncover key community assets and to develop shared visions for the future.
Making Places built on programmes from Architecture + Design Scotland and SURF which brought the Scottish Government's 'Strategy for Architecture and Place' to people across the country. We developed a process of utilising design thinking to promote a culture change of collective responsibility amongst stakeholders and the community.
The outcomes of these workshops were Visual Briefs and Illustrative Action Plans that embody the shared values and vision for any new building, or high street regeneration project, that is accessible and legible to all parties.
Making Places includes place based reviews, workshops and action plans developed for locations across Scotland: Dyce, Peterhead, Glasgow, Tarbolton & Dailly, Annbank, Brechin, Irvine and Glen Garnock among them.
Choose Peterhead
Supported by Aberdeenshire Council and the Scottish Government, we designed and facilitated a Design Studio programme to explore the development of Peterhead Town Centre.
The geographical remit was limited to the ‘spine of Peterhead’; taking in the main shopping area and pedestrianised precinct – an area traditionally the heart of the town, but also one struggling with a number of issues from the closure of a significant number of businesses and a rise in crime and anti- social behaviour.
Our team made an early decision to be constructively and wilfully optimistic, and to strive for creative solutions to positive needs, rather than detailed discussions on the negative and ‘preventative’ solutions. This was backed up with a design ethos that was deliberately un-corporate to reinforce that this was a community-led process supported by experts, not led by outside professional voices.
Pick Parkhead
Through the 80’s and 90’s the built fabric of Glasgow’s East End was further eroded with poor town planning philosophies that saw roads and retail parks prioritised over people and pedestrians. Although in a physical sense Parkhead, and its historical Town Centre, survived the worst of the post war planning initiatives it was effectively annexed and dislocated from its adjacent communities and surrounded by derelict industrial land.
In more recent times, Parkhead has become overrun with cars with local retail subsumed by the Forge Shopping Centre. Pick Parkhead was a platform to speculate and capture concepts that will reenergise the Town Centre, concepts that will speed up a quickening of efforts to embrace the location by all those who live and work around it. With our team of locally embedded creative practitioners we developed themes and proposals to inform a Parkhead Town Centre Action Plan, with recommendations that were both pragmatic and playful, and that will seek to breathe new life and spirit into the community.
With our team of locally embedded creative practitioners we developed themes and proposals to inform a Parkhead Town Centre Action Plan, with recommendations that were both pragmatic and playful, and that will seek to breathe new life and spirit into the community.
Clients: SURF; Aberdeenshire Council; Parkhead Housing Association; MODO; South Ayrshire Council; North Ayrshire Council
Locations: Across Scotland: Dyce; Peterhead, Glasgow; Tarbolton & Dailly; Glen Garnock; Annbank; Irvine; Brechin
Completion: 2012 - 2017
Funding Partners: Making Places, The Scottish Government