The Place-Maker-Space is a physical room centrally located in the city and is specifically intended to generate collaborative debate and creative interaction between universities, the public and private sector and communities (Farrell Review 2014). It will be used by university academics, students, graduate groups, planning officials, private companies and community members. As a physical extension of the Community 21 digital website it also forms part of a broader ‘Maker-Space’ movement which has seen the development of communal craft and technology workshops which help form social bonds and develop new skills within communities through acts of making (Hatch, 2014; Halse et al, 2010).
Our work on the Community21 digital platform has demonstrated the role making can have in engaging different groups and communities (Gant & Duggan, 2013) through the fabrication of tools, objects and products. The Place-Maker-Space provides the physical space and relevant software to enable groups to come together to develop collective visions for places making community and neighbourhood planning a more democratic process (DCLG 2015). As such the university plays a significant role in engaging local communities and helping them to engage with and shape their locality in a way that is both creative and informed. (see Making Futures, 2015).
Research questions the space and broader Community21 research explores include:
What role might digital and physical making methods and spaces perform in the engagement of communities in forming collaborative visions for the future their neighbourhood?
Examples of the methods we have used historically include:
The production of augmented reality techno-town-tapestries where ‘hard-to-reach’ or disenfranchised groups can use animation apps to ‘characterise’ problems or ideas in anonymous ways and communicate them back to the community through a publically accessible, intelligent interface.
Minecraft (a popular computer game) which engages young people in the co-production of highly interactive, ‘gamified’ and realistic virtual simulations of their lived or imagined spaces that can be shared locally or globally (Reckien & Eisenack, 2010).
Ageing apps and role play apps that visually illustrate someone’s own ageing process to elicit empathy in younger people or enable the anonymous expression of ideas and issues.
The Community21 initiative with its digital and physical spaces provide an opportunity to co-define the challenges and concerns for research and practice with different urban and rural communities. From a university perspective, this process is invaluable in helping to ensure the continued relevance of our teaching and research in subjects such as design, planning, urbanism, social science, geography etc. Moreover it is also helping to redefine these subject areas away from static notions of disciplinary distinction, into inter-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary engaged activity that involves stakeholders, transcends boundaries and is responsive to changing contexts. Through co-production and co-defined spaces we are able to make meaningful and useful applied place-based interventions, connecting communities (Sawhney et al, 2015) for sustainability and resilience (Manzini 2015; Horlings 2015; Frankin & Marsden, 2015). Together they illustrate how virtual and physical spaces both play a role in meaningful engagement.
