The power of insider - outside collaboration
We asked Nathan, our young farmer engagement & outreach team member to share with us some insights around working on our recent listening project with farmers and landowners across West Yorkshire. Joining our team for the duration of the project he generously guided our engagement approach, strengthening and connecting opportunities to build relationships across the farming community as well as being a fantastic team member. Read on for his perspective on the whole process:
Permission to dream together, about towns
On a hot summer’s day last year, 8 strangers met for the first time in Shipley, a town in West Yorkshire to begin a collective imagination practice journey with an invitation from myself, stewarded by Huddlecraft, Canopy & Centre for Public Impact. The aim? To get curious about our towns and what their future could hold.
The Nature of things
Ever since locating Street Space to Bradford it’s been fascinating to notice an important actor making her way into all of our projects, quite by stealth: Nature.
Now, I’ve never been a big ‘nature’ person, probably guilty of being one of those people who enjoys ‘doing things in nature’ rather than connecting with its natural healing and life giving powers. My focus is often getting people outside, making it easier to walk and cycle and I’ll do whatever it takes to support this mission.
Join us for…Your Town Jam
Join a 3 month hybrid learning journey to collectively reimagine the future of your town, by growing & testing your ideas in real life.
Towns are places we buy and sell in, live in and move through, play and work in. What might happen if we put relationships at their heart? What if we made everyone truly feel welcome? Or put the circular economy into practice? Or centred future generations? What would these changes look and feel like? How can we usher them into the real world through collective imagination and experimentation?
The joy of…co-design
There’s been an explosion in the desire to evoke ‘joy’ in our public spaces over the last few years. I’m not sure where it’s come from but it’s certainly needed.
The drab, grey spaces most of us live in and move through as part of our day to day routines are often overlooked and unappreciated spaces that instead of platforming creativity, joy, possibility and connectedness are rooted in necessity, survival, the bare minimum…
A radical shift in how (I-we) see the world
I’ve had the privilege of co-facilitating a citizens jury on climate change over the last 8 weeks. It’s been a fascinating process.
Commissioned by a recently formed Shipley Town Council the instigator Town Councillor Paul McHugh has been clear on the vision from the start: To create a mandate to tackle climate change at a local level here in Shipley…
Working alongside someone else’s conflict
This year Street Space have supported me to become a qualified mediator and although my heart isn’t set on becoming a mediator in the traditional contexts, in-line or precursing legal disputes — I am, ever enchanted by the principles of mediation, moving people through conflict to a place of resolution, understanding and mutual benefit.
At Street Space, it’s often that our projects touch, intersect, neighbour and surround instances of conflict. These might be conflicts between communities and councils resulting from a difficult decision, a lack of listening, funding cuts or often a lack of meaningful and thorough engagement in the first place….
“You hired someone from the local area? That’s nice”
In all our projects when we’re working in a neighbourhood or with a community we don’t know or have established links in, we start by hiring a local producer to join our engagement team. This means the creation of a flexible job role which allows someone to shape where they live and help connect our engagement to established local networks they may be a part of…
What does a genuinely collaborative street naming process look like?
In recent years, the calls across the globe for renaming streets and removing statues can be heard more loudly and passionately than ever. Aided hugely by the Black Lives Matter movement, citizens are more commonly and more loudly calling out…
Want people to feel safe in your town centre? Activate it!
Street Space are excited to share results from our latest action research study outside one of London’s top ten busiest stations. The research found that by encouraging and enabling ‘activation’ such as busking and performance by local artists and…
What does a street designed by 3 year olds look like?
Throughout our community engagement process we seek out diverse perspectives and voices. Working in partnership with PJA on the development of a permanent design for a traffic filter along Windmill Drive in Clapham Common we wanted…
Small acts of heroism…
Over the last few years at Street Space we’ve been involved in conversations with local people about how to improve the footbridges over the railway lines in Barking Town Centre…
Is it time to get rid of the ‘master’ plan & embrace The People’s Plan?
What’s the problem?
Masterplanning shapes the future of our neighbourhoods and communities, deciding what kind of enterprises there will be space for, how many homes, community amenities and who…
Who makes a real local?
Over the last few years in community engagement there’s been a real sway (which we’ve largely been pushing for) towards authentic conversations with ‘local people’ in order to identify meaningful ways for people to shape their area…
10 things we’ve learnt about online co-design
We’ve all been busy adapting, rethinking and shifting as we learn to live in a new way of doing things. It’s been painful at times, disappointing. I’ve definitely found myself grieving for what might have been…
Deeds not Words
As part of our journey to develop our North Star, our collaborative vision looking forward into the future we wanted to create a Manifesto. A manifesto is defined in the dictionary as “intentions, motives and views you want to publicly declare”…