Meet Our Waterfront
Wide reaching stakeholder engagement and communications strategy for the masterplan of a major city centre waterfront site
The River Clyde has always played an important role in the history of Glasgow. It is often said, "Glasgow made the Clyde, and the Clyde made Glasgow”. Since the decline of Glasgow’s heavy industry, the Clyde has been in the process of finding its new identity, and activity is returning to the waterfront through cultural, commercial and public spaces, supported by residential and business developments.
In early 2021, New Practice was appointed alongside an expert team led by Hawkins\Brown and Civic Engineers, as Lead Consultant for Stakeholder Engagement and Communications relating to the development of a masterplan for the ‘Custom House Quay and Carlton Place’ site, which spans the north and south banks of the Clyde in the city centre of Glasgow. The masterplan provides an opportunity to (re)activate this prominent waterfront, and transform the perception of the river from a barrier into an open space, connecting its surrounding communities.
The masterplan is anchored by the practical aim to address the structural integrity of the quay walls, and in turn improve the quality and experience of the river edge. Key ambitions for the masterplan centre around the enhancement of pedestrian and cycle connectivity along the river edge and identifing mixed use development potential to bring vibrancy to the area.
To build participation across the city for this important once in a generation project, we began by creating a number of online engagement tools, including surveys and virtual walking tours, to gather local people’s memories, opinions and visions for the waterfront. Critically, we devised a programme of events and activities across Spring and Summer 2021 to bring people directly into contact with the site, the river itself, and the design team.
A number of guided site walks, conducted at various times of the week and day, facilitated conversation from a diverse range of voices around how the masterplan can provide inclusive public spaces fit for the future. The discussions were far-ranging, and the topics covered explored safety to performance space, climate resilience to public amenity.
We delivered a week long ‘Street Art Summer Camp’ where we engaged young people in a conversation about the ways in which the waterfront could better designed for young people, now and into the future. At current, street art is a defining visual and urban feature of Custom House Quay and hence participants where invited to collectively design and create a temporary artwork to communicate their responses. In addition, the participants were able to access free and fully-instructed skateboarding and roller-skating lessons as part of the summer cap, led by Glasgow based social enterprise Skate of Mind. This provided a further opportunity to prototype new ways of engaging with and using the waterfront.
A highlight of the engagement programme was a spectacular day of free boat rides down the River Clyde for members of the public. The event offered people a new perspective of the river, and facilitated and recorded conversations about the emerging masterplan.
In Autumn 2021, the design team held two days of activities and a public exhibition staged within The Briggait, a former Fish Market adjacent to the Custom House Quay and Carlton Place site. During this event our team shared early concept design and held drop-in sessions / open forums, where members of the public were invited to meet the design team and respond to the emerging masterplan.
To date, public conversations have been anchored around the need to create a mixed used and diverse public spaces to capitalise on the unique setting of the waterfront and provide a restorative sense of openness and connection to nature.
Later in 2022, a round of statutory public consultation take place and will include a public exhibition and design team presentation, both digital and in-person, to provide an update to the public prior to the submission of a Planning Permission in Principle application.
You can sign-up to be kept informed of all forthcoming consultation activity and key information as the future plan progresses.
To sign up, please send an email to info@meetourwaterfront.co.uk, with the header Meet Our Waterfront Updates.
Website: Meet Our Waterfront
Client: Glasgow City Council
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Completion: Ongoing
Collaborators: Hawkins\Brown, Civic Engineers, Harrison + Stevens, Urban Movement, ITYP Energised, Arch Henderson, JLL, Turley, Atelier Ten, Turner & Townsend