Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
New Wortley is inner city suburb of Leeds. New Wortley Community exist to manage New Wortley Community Centre and provide a range of services to the community. After completion of the new Community Centre (Case Study 002) confidence was high and the association wanted to upgrade the public realm around the building. They collaborated with the landscape architecture course through its Design and Community Live Project module to produce a range of designs that supported an application to Leeds City Council's Local Centres Programme (LCP) grant scheme. £70,000 was awarded. Project Office was appointed to implement the project.
For the purpose of the LCP opportunity, the brief was to focus on work to improve the area at the corner of Green Lane and Tong Road (a gateway to New Wortley) by improving the appearance of the green space on the corner including creating a community led colourful mural on the run-down side of the existing building.
Project Office's first task was to review the designs submitted with the application for a mural and fence artwork. I decided that the ideas were not strong enough and a rethink was required, this was supported by NWCA. This led to a MArch 1 Live Project to design a gateway based upon the grant award. Students were asked to critique the grant submission and prepare their own design work for the gateway. I wrote an academic brief for this purpose. It included the requirement for participation from the community. In addition, a sub-group was set up to facilitate procurement, this included NWCA staff, council administrators and local residents. The meetings were chaired by Project Office. Students attended meetings with their design work. It was agreed that the favoured gateway design was to site text on top of the tower blocks, an idea proposed by Noor Al Ali. Project Office produced visualisations for further consultation. At this point, a local councillor took exception to the design and unilaterally blocked its development.
There was a conversation that I had with an older guy who visited the local community centre that changed my whole perception of how powerful this project could be. He told me that the activities that he takes part in at the centre helped him get out from a really dark place... It changed how I approached the design and felt way more invested in doing something that might help him.
Often local authorities are nervous of working with local people. In this project the gateway subgroup was formed so that it had representation of local people. It is also unusual for the local authority to experience co-design methods with students.
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Community Collaborators:
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