do dream pledge

commissioned by

Urban Living started the Sense of Place project in June 2009.
The idea was to strengthen local people’s involvement in shaping
the places where they live, particularly through spatial plans and
the neighbourhood management plans. The two pilot areas, the
neighbourhoods around Soho Road and Dudley Road, were chosen
because of their potential to accommodate housing growth and to
strengthen community cohesion. These are diverse and dynamic
areas, with a younger than average population, and with over 70%
of people being from black and minority ethnic groups.
We wanted to do this project differently, to get away from dry
plans and charts; to find more human ways of allowing local
people to tell the on-going story of their area. The approach made
use of participatory arts, community architecture, international
development techniques, and digital gaming technology. The
result has been a ‘co-production’ approach to place making,
complementing Birmingham’s ‘Total Place’ pilot, which aims to put
citizens at the heart of service delivery.
It went well. There was a high level of local involvement, the plans
produced were much more effective as a result, and we learnt a
great deal. I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who
i
has worked hard to make this project a success. As well as local
residents, business people, council officers and the Urban Living
team, a large set of people was needed to deliver a collaborative
approach to neighbourhood planning. The professional team
included Multistory, a local arts organization; Architecture 00:/,
strategy, research and design; Digital Native Academy, a gaming
company; Professor Nabeel Hamdi, advisor to the United Nations;
Architecture Sans Frontière, participatory arts; MADE, the regional
architecture centre; CUDOS from Birmingham City University; and
Advantage West Midlands.
I strongly believe that this approach we are grappling towards
is part of something important. It goes way beyond the mere
physical location of assets: it’s about how people are allowed
to see themselves in the places where they live; how they see
and connect with their neighbours; where the power lies in their
relationship with the State; and how all of us can collectively take
responsibility for shaping the future.
Peter Latchford
Chair of Urban Living

Listening to people’s stories has given Urban Living and the
Sense of Place consortium a deeper understanding of how the
community feel about their neighbourhoods. Listening to people’s
stories has helped us to understand the complex order of how
real places actually work. Through this project we’ve been able
to capture people’s stories in a practical way, enabling them to
influence plan making and neighbourhood management. Getting
together to share stories has also assisted with community
networking, relationship building, growing micro enterprises, and
stitching things together. It’s been a great privilege to work with
active citizens and an energetic team on this project. The resulting
“Do – Dream – Pledge” co-production technique is already reaping
benefits for neighbourhood renewal.
ii
Urban Living and the project consortium would especially like
to thank the following people, without whom the project would
not have been possible: community researchers Diego Wright,
Miles Lewis Griffin, Raymond Brown and Jasmin Begum; the local
neighbourhood managers, Colin Hanno and Tracy Thorne; Hector
‘Mr Handsworth’, and the many other members of the community
who helped and contributed to the project along the way.
Nick Corbett
Director of Urban Design and Enterprise
Urban Living
 1

Question:

How can the processes involved in neighbourhood

regeneration engage with people differently to make
a more effective difference to people’s lives and
livelihoods?

Answer:

We must be brave enough to start small and give

people the practical tools to ‘Do – Dream – Pledge’ in
their own neighbourhoods, but think big about what we
can achieve together with people’s place-making
power.
 2

On 11 February 2010, a conference was organised in
Birmingham under the title ‘Is the Masterplan Dead?’. It was
the culmination of a research project called ‘Sense of Place’,
commissioned by Urban Living in summer 2009. The project
sought to understand, how people’s everyday experience of
dreamdo that by taking the challenge of localism seriously, by working
their neighbourhoods – their positive memories, amazing stories
and dreams as well as their concerns and annoyances – can
be turned more effectively into a form of active citizenship and
neighbourhood renewal. Set in the Soho Road and Dudley Road in
North West Birmingham, within the Urban Living Housing Market
Pathfinder Renewal area, the project aimed to find better ways to
link ‘small change’, like when a group of neighbours come together
to clean up their street, to larger scale ‘strategic’ change such as
a community’s creative involvement in producing neighbourhood
strategies. Too often the small scale and the strategic remain in
separate worlds, achieving just half of what they could.
Why is this important? Because it goes to the heart of a
challenging question we face: in the new economic climate,
with constraints on public and private funds, how can we as
built environment professionals best achieve our aim to create
positive change in our cities and neighbourhoods? We can only
together with local people and their ideas to ‘co-produce’ the
city. This project took on the challenge of finding a practical way
forward, set against the context of ongoing urban regeneration
projects like the production and delivery of the A41 Strategic
Regeneration Framework, the Ladyport Masterplan, and the area’s
Neighbourhood Management structures.

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dream pledge
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do dream

Times are changing. The current recession has had severe
impacts on the ground – witness the rising vacancy rates, the
slow-down in new house building and the looming reality of
public funding cuts. But even in the boom years before the
recession, regeneration and masterplanning have not always been
successful. For example, a survey in all New Deal for Communities
areas across the UK recently concluded that, after 10 years
of regeneration investment and engagement, residents hardly
feel more involved in local decision-making than before; and
the Housing Audit findings of CABE, the Government advisor for
architecture and urban design quality, on the low quality of new
house building are a stark reminder that we never had a reason
to be complacent about housing design1. And these are just two
examples – but they show we have to think hard about what
successful regeneration and masterplanning really means.
3
And the wider context is also challenging. As the
Birmingham city-region, like much of urban Britain, has a ‘super-
diverse’ society, this can lead to different groups not sharing the
same points of view and to segregation within neighbourhoods
– with negative impacts on long-term community cohesion. Also,
the economy is increasingly de-localised, with loss of industrial
jobs having severe impacts locally and the dominance of chain
retail stores eroding the independent local economy. The public is
massively indebted and skills are as unequally spread as income.
And the erosion of quality in the everyday public realm seems
to mirror the loss of confidence within some local communities.
Though the social policies of the last decades no doubt have
addressed some of these problems, it is clear that deeper
challenges remain.

How do we address these issues when both public and
private finance seem constrained for the foreseeable
future? A new approach is needed.
The Sense of Place project looked to tap into the power of people
and communities, as here lies the real potential for change: this
has been summarised as ‘people make places’ – but that’s only
true if we stop getting in their way and instead help them to take
back control.
Actively involved communities can make a huge difference in
achieving, for example, successful public realm improvements
and reductions in energy use. To accomplish a significant scale
of change, it is clear this has to be a collective process involving
many local views and ideas and going beyond the individual or
from
4
small groups. Often such approaches start with what people have
in common locally: the places where they live, work and socialise.
If we start with local needs and priorities from that everyday
environment and unleash people’s place-making potential, we
could turn people’s ideas, energy and creativity and drive into real
projects and tangible change.
But ‘involving people’ in urban regeneration is no easy task;
professionals have not always been good at this. How can people’s
needs and priorities best be gauged, negotiated, and put to work?
This is all the more difficult in areas where the ‘communities’
central to this agenda may lack the skills and confidence to raise
their voice effectively or, more difficult still, where there may be
conflicts or lack of trust between groups. Unless we provide an
answer to such thorny questions, we are likely to fail.
to

The pilot area for this project – the Soho Road and Dudley Road in
North West Birmingham, within the Urban Living Housing Market
Pathfinder Renewal area – contains all these complexities. First
built in the age of industrial innovation, today it is both physically
and socially fragmented. Physically, the landscape is crossed by
railway lines, canals, road traffic, industrial zones and post-war
housing estates. Loss of industrial activity has left gaps in the built
fabric and in people’s livelihoods.
5
Socially, the area is shaped by its cultural diversity, constant
demographic change and deep inequalities. There is no simple
story here: the area has a proud heritage, new economic
opportunities and cultural pride – which is visible in the shops and
religious buildings along both roads – but there are also stories of
resentment and decline as witnessed in the recent riots and the
many empty buildings.
What does Sense of Place mean in this context?

The meaning of the term ‘place’ is complex.
The author Christian Norberg-Schulz writes “a place is a focus
where we experience the meaningful events of our existence”. It
is certainly about more than bricks and mortar. It is also, often, a
humble, everyday phenomenon: iconic experiences like festivals
and celebrations or buildings do matter, but just as important is
an everyday engagement with a place where people feel they are
welcome and can contribute.
The way places are used, the meanings people place on different
parts of their environment, and the visual expressions through
6
buildings and spaces are as diverse as the ever-changing
population of an area. In inner city communities such as those
found in North West Birmingham, there are both traditional working
class communities with low levels of mobility and a long-term
relationship to place, and immigrant communities whose sense
of identity and belonging is connected to a series of global family,
cultural, religious and commercial networks. We must recognise
these diverse realities: this is not just about long-term memories
alone, no matter how important the physical and cultural heritage
of the industrial landscape, but about the diverse reality of the
neighbourhoods today, experienced by all who visit, live and work in
the Soho and Dudley Road neighbourhoods.
 7

In creating our methodology, we were inspired by many projects
going on elsewhere: Manchester City Council’s ‘A Sense of Place’
project, the ‘Making Space in Dalston’ study in London (by J&L
Gibbons and muf architecture), and the Sensory Trust’s ‘Sense
of Place - Sustainable Place-making’ projects for example. And
abroad, we took inspiration from the ‘Designing Dublin’ project and
the ‘Mapping Istanbul’ publication2. All of them, in different ways,
have explored alternative approaches to uncovering the hidden
potential of places, and new pathways to action.
Urban Living encouraged the consortium of project partners
to develop a locally appropriate approach. The ‘co-production’
approach that was used, which is a partnership between local
people and professionals, is one step in the direction we need to
travel. It’s about developing the capacity to create change together,
including the local community, the private, the public and the
voluntary sector.
The rest of this report tells the story of what we did, what we found
and what we see as the next steps.

Manchester Sense of Place Making Space in Dalston Designing Dublin Sense of Place - Sustain- Mapping Istanbul
www.manchester.gov.uk/site/scripts/ www.designforlondon.gov.uk/what-we- www.design21c.com able Place-making
download_info.php?fileID=1012 do/all/dalston-town-centre/ www.sensorytrust.org.uk
 8

Our approach can best be seen as action research, using a The primary research aims were:
range of tools in order to reveal the social dynamics and place
attachment in the study area that do not (or are slow to) show • to be inclusive of a wide range of local realities and stories,
up in official statistics, but can powerfully shape people’s views. connecting with the great diversity of people in the area.
Our aim was to make these processes visible in an innovative,
• to create tangible change throughout the project: some of
accessible way. For this reason the consortium of project partners
the activities of this project aimed to facilitate new interactions
was drawn from a wide range of skills: from community arts
between local people around a number of shared themes.
practice (Multistory) and the regional architecture centre (MADE) to
built environment outreach (Architecture sans Frontières - UK) and
• to maximise opportunities for follow-up after the project. We
from development planning (Prof Nabeel Hamdi) to digital gaming
reached out to community organisations and linked up with
technology (Digital Native Academy) and place-shaping research
ongoing projects, thus creating ‘fertile ground’ for communities and
and strategy practice (00:/).
project partners to take forward a series of tangible projects.
 10

The project consisted of three key phases: Three project-wide elements were added to this approach:

• the mapping activity enabled us to better understand the
study area. We started to understand what the local issues were.
We explored what works well and what doesn’t (and why it doesn’t),
what local people like, what they don’t like and why. We piloted
a range of different approaches and promoted awareness of the
project.
• organising catalyst events to share our project findings with
local people and working with them to scope out the potential for
follow-up projects.
• a dissemination event to share findings with a professional
audience.
• the creation of a digital toolkit both as a mapping
methodology to directly capture local information, particularly
working with young people, and to communicate findings to a wider
audience.
• the recruitment and training of four local Community
Researchers to be involved in the mapping process and catalyst
events, as well as to take the project forward after the completion
of this commission.
• ongoing evaluation and reflection throughout the project,
through workshops led by Nabeel Hamdi.

In order to capture a wide diversity of lived realities, it was

appropriate to use a range of different approaches to the mapping
and catalyst stages. These will be explained in subsequent
chapters.
local ners/
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 11

The mapping phase consisted of a diverse range of engagement

tools and methodologies. We recognised that given the
constraints of time and budget, it was impossible to obtain a
fully representative picture of place attachments and place
engagements - but in order to reach out to different groups and
give them the confidence to participate, different ways of working
were necessary. Also, in this phase we wanted to pilot and test
different methodologies that we could use in follow-up projects.
 13

The methodologies used were:

• visual observation during a series of visits to the study areas. • digital gaming sessions and fieldwork with young people
and youth workers, using PSP digital recording equipment to
• desktop research about ‘amazing stories’ and positive capture stories and images of daily life on and around the Dudley
initiatives across the area. Road.

• several informal interviews with passers-by along Soho Road, • a series of ‘sight & sound’ workshops with children at a
Dudley Road, the canals and in Summerfield Park, prompted by primary school, using music to start conversations about place.
informal methods including street performances, creative arts
techniques, and PSP digital recording equipment. A detailed schedule of activities and participants can be found in
Appendix 1
• in-depth interviews with community organisations, business
owners and employees.

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 15

The findings of the mapping stage were diverse and complex. They can be found in all their richness on the evolving project website, www.
sohofoundation.org.uk, which contains the Sense of Place digital toolkit and online neighbourhood communication platform.
The website is currently in development as central part of the project (see next chapter).

Overall, people’s many different individual stories can be grouped into 10 larger stories about the area, under the following headings:

1. Sense of Place as ‘tough love’: Many people love where
they live and work, and they value unique local qualities of the area
(like the built heritage and the multicultural diversity). But people’s
sense of place is a bit like ‘tough love’ - there’s a lot to complain
about too, and daily nuisances like fly-tipping and anti-social
behaviour often dominate people’s perception of the area.
2. Loved places and underused assets: Whilst many locals
and visitors love the diversity of local shops, it seems that the
strongest shared affection is for public spaces like the Summerfield
Park or Handsworth Library on Soho Road. They are the places of
potential where diverse users can share spaces and experiences.
In an area where different groups don’t always get on, the way such
places are managed to be welcoming to all makes a big difference.
At the same time, many say that not enough is made of much of
the heritage of the area like the canals or old pubs and industrial
buildings. Unfortunately, a story of loss and decline is clear in much
of what we heard.

3. The pace of change: The areas around the Soho Road and
Dudley Road are places of intense dynamism: as reception areas
for recent immigrants, there’s a constant change in who uses these
places – reflected in the diversity of languages on shop fronts and
religious buildings. It’s a cosmopolitan but delicate balance, as one
resident says about the Soho Road: “people bring their own ways
from other places which makes it both interesting and chaotic”.
4. The hidden wealth of place: Some buildings and events
create a highly visible and iconic identity – but so many of the
amazing stories that make a place special remain in the shadows.
It is clear that the quality of places also depends on these silent
heroes and often overlooked roles that people play, both formally
and informally. But it is difficult to tell these stories by traditional
means. We need to get better at giving them a voice.
16
5. Competition over places and resources: What became
clear is how often different groups – ethnic groups, religious
groups etc – live their lives in segregated networks. The material
realities of people’s lives in the context of poverty, hard-pressed
entrepreneurship and strained public services, can give rise to a
sense of competition where jealousy and mutual suspicion hurt the
potential to act collectively.
6. Imagining Place – no platform for engagement:
Neither the Soho Road nor the Dudley Road are seen as one clear,
coherent place. This is logical because people often think in terms
of their own social network or of smaller areas first – they identify
with their ethnic or religious group, or with Handsworth or Lozells,
not with the Soho Road – they do not ‘see like a street’. But what
happens when it’s impossible to communicate across such distinct
realities? It makes it harder to work together on the issues that
matter to everyone.

7. Everyday leadership & trust: If people really are to make
places, then we need initiative and leadership from the many, not
the few. So this is not just about finding official ‘representatives’
of the community – which, in an area of such diversity, may be
difficult anyway as ‘the’ community may simply not be the same for
everyone. Instead, we need to recognise that leadership arises in
many different guises and places, and that these stories need to
be told and celebrated too, with all their dynamism.
8. It may look local, but...: When people talk about their local
neighbourhood or shopping street, they perceive the small shops
as ‘local’. But what lies behind is a more complex reality where on
the one hand, a local restaurant may actually get its vegetables
from a local allotment, but where shops are also owned by people
who live and invest elsewhere. This can be limiting, but also
creates new links and new potential for working together. Making
such fuzzy realities visible will help people understand better how
to work together, with whom, and when.
17
9. Scepticism too – ‘what we say does not matter’:
Unfortunately, we have heard it all before: the cynicism of ‘nothing
will ever change’ and the idea that what we think, feel and say
has no influence on what will happen in the future. The path from
people’s ideas and concerns to actual, tangible change is often too
blurry to still be visible from a distance – leading people to simply
‘give up’. Against that, we need to tell more credible stories of when
change does happen; and that cannot happen with the traditional
marketing tools.
10. The risk of the eroding commons – a taste of
worse to come? People’s sense of place is much influenced by
their everyday experience. And if that is one of retrenching service
provision and cutbacks in – say – street-cleaning, it may well drown
out other, more positive stories. This is a big risk to local quality
of life and the stories people will tell themselves and each other.
So that other side of the coin – of amazing people doing amazing
things locally, and showing leadership in many unexpected ways –
urgently needs to find a platform to be told, and to grow into a new
way of doing things to improve the neighbourhood’s quality of life.
 19

The mapping phase of the project gave us an insight into the

complexities of the ‘Sense of Place’ concept: an incredible set of
stories that need to be heard – and, judging by people’s willingness
to participate, that want to be heard.

And there lies a challenge – it seems that today’s neighbourhoods

lack the platforms where neighbours can talk to neighbours and
communities overcome their differences, and where they can
talk about what they are doing, dreaming and hoping to achieve.
Life goes at a quick pace, and the social life of places often feels
fragmented. Yet Sense of Place needs to be shared.

How can we grow structures that answer this challenge?

 do pledge
dream
eg birmingham city carnival eg community hubs eg st michael’s community
sensory gardens

do
do pledge
dream

eg nishkam furniture workshop eg community cafe eg keep our street clean


‘The story of the early 21st Century’ cannot yet be written – future
generations are to tell. But one of the most powerful stories of this
age, no doubt, is that of the new communication infrastructures
created in the past decade. Enabled by progress in technology, they
have a profound impact on how we live. Time Magazine recognised
this when, in 2007, they chose an unusual ‘person of the year’:
instead of world leaders or astronauts, they chose ‘You’: the mass-
communicating, content-creating, and news-reporting public.
People use the new communication tools to change how self-
expression, news, culture, and politics happen in the world today.
From YouTube and MySpace to Facebook and Flickr, new platforms
liberated new behaviour, and we live in a different world as a result.
21
The urban policy and regeneration professions have been
searching for ways to tap into this, and the previous chapter
shows that there is a great need to find new neighbourhood-level
communication platforms. The digital toolkit designed as part
of this project aims to fill this void. Of course, it varies what type
of communication platform makes the most sense in different
neighbourhoods: different approaches will work in different places.
In this project we chose to develop a digital infrastructure. In other
places, different approaches may be more productive. For example,
shared booking systems for community buildings, or community
notice boards, or simply reconfiguring a public space may be ‘the
missing link’ to address. Or re-thinking extended schools provision
as community hubs may be the relevant step, or creating a
community library like in Handsworth... local needs vary, and with
them, the solutions.
the platform could be...

+ events calender

... it depends on local conditions


The toolkit was designed as a means of capturing the ‘digital
memory’ of what local people mean by sense of place,
complementing more traditional approaches to urban regeneration
and community consultation and providing people with a platform
to communicate about what goes on in their neighbourhood. The
emphasis within the project period was on providing a set of digital
tools to allow users to view and submit stories and information in
an easy to use but engaging way – and to let them tell their stories
and ideas directly to each other.
community researchers do
dream
community journalists
& junior reporters pledge
community
23
Designed to become an interactive local website, the toolkit
consisted of a range of social media and other tools combined
with a shallow learning curve such that it could easily be adopted
exploited and even adapted by local users. It is built around
a Google Maps based web-tool for the Soho and Dudley Road
corridor, and its features can evolve as technologies change –
as no doubt they will. The cost of adoption was minimised both
in terms of initial building and ongoing management to ensure
financial sustainability.
ENGAGED AREA
SENSE OF PLACE : DIGITAL TOOLKIT
www.sohofoundation.org.uk

Digital Toolkit

Throughout the project, the toolkit – a mere infrastructure in
principle – took on a particular shape based on the collective
needs and opportunities identified in the mapping phase, and
based on the experiences with innovative ‘mass participation’
projects undertaken elsewhere like Glasgow 2020 and
PledgeBank.3
We developed the Do – Dream – Pledge identity on the basis of
what we learnt in the mapping stage. It emphasised three collective
behaviours that together can shape a new regeneration approach
in the study area.
DO – tell people about what you are doing, seeing, experiencing,
and engaging with locally.
DREAM – share your dreams and aspirations for the future of the
place
PLEDGE – seek new ways to work together with others,
contributing your skills and resources with an ‘I will if you will’ logic.
25
The digital toolkit can play an important role as an open-access
public engagement tool: as a positive engagement platform,
it would go beyond the passive citizen-state relationship of
FixMyStreet - the postcode-based blog of the consumer-citizen
expecting a better pothole fixin’ service from the local Council.
The aim is that it functions like the more productive local
neighbourhood blogs like harringayonline.com, which performs
an activating role. For instance it brought locals together to clear
snow-covered passages in the absence of Council support in the
severe winter of 2009-20104. With the Do – Dream – Pledge
identity, the Sense of Place website would encourage a next
generation of citizen-led initiatives by showing geo-tagged ideas,
dreams and actual projects so that local people’s regeneration
propositions can be debated and developed together with public
and private initiative.
do dream pledge
 26

Of course we are aware of the complexities of seeding a successful
digital engagement platform – the technology can work but will
people use it? The governance, hosting and curating of a wiki-
website as a live, positive community is complex and needs to
be resourced. This is a key challenge for the sustainability of the
project.
The idea also needs to be inclusive to those who are less than fully
up to speed with the digital age, as well as open to those without
the means to access technology at home or at work.
Different methods to bring the digital toolkit into ‘the real world’
and to connect people to this platform were tested during the
process. One of them was the Community Journalists initiative,
which we’ll explore in the next chapter. The second was making
the Do – Dream – Pledge identity visible in the neighbourhood in
many different ways: on hoardings, through window stickers and
periodic events. This way it crosses the divide from the digital to
the physical. As the illustrations show, the possibilities are endless
– and each could create new interfaces with which to interact, via
text messages, image uploads and other applications that already
exist or will be developed in the future. So far, a series of site
hoardings has already been created with the Do – Dream – Pledge
identity.

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pro ardin ac g
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what do you
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SOHO do dream pledge

ROAD B21

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do dream do

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 28

One of the core ambitions of the project was to maximise

opportunities for a sustainable legacy after the project. That’s why
we not only mapped local community organisations but also linked
with their ongoing projects, exploring and creating ‘fertile ground’
for communities and project partners to take projects forward and
scale them up beyond this project. As a culmination, we organised
two public events to show what we had done and test our ideas
further with local people and organisations.

Both events took part over one weekend in January 2010.

 30

The Living Room was a one day community event on the Soho
Road, organised jointly with the Neighbourhood Manager for
Handsworth. The principle was to create a scene that could spark Room
Living
conversation amongst residents and visitors and, by raising
awareness, could act as a ‘catalyst’ for bringing about big change ark_
FIN
AL.
indd
1

okm

through small actions. A wide range of engagement tools were

used.

The event achieved the following:

1. Launched the Community Champion Scheme (Neighbourhood

Apprentices), developed by the Council’s Neighbourhood Managers
in parallel to the Sense of Place project. pledge tree

2. Created a tangible opportunity for people to come together

to discuss common goals and ambitions for their area and make
pledges to bring about lasting difference through small changes.
swap
3. Improved perceptions of public space on the Soho Road by ap
for a p lant pledge
ledge
showing what is possible with small means.
4. Showcased findings from community mapping activities for
discussion, building on key themes in further discussion with the
wider community.
5. Created new networks between community organisations, the living
room
Neighbourhood Managers and local people.
 32

The Community Journalism scheme was developed to break down

the barriers between the digital and real worlds and generate c
jouomm
wo rn un
content for the Sense of Place website through direct involvement rk alis ity
sh t
op
of local people. The basic idea was to identify a small group of
people to be recruited to become Community Journalists in return
for training in a range of digital journalism skills. They would work
alongside the community researchers during the Sense of Place
project, and continue the work afterwards.

The ‘taster session’ event achieved the following:

1. Gauged interest from local people and community

organisations, which was very positive and led to lots of potential
participants.
2. Disseminated the project and Do – Dream – Pledge concept and
dream
tested how it fits with people’s understanding of current issues,
do
needs, aspirations and opportunities.
3. Tested the idea of the digital toolkit, website usability and design
– in terms of interface, content and use.
4. Engaged the Council’s Neighbourhood Managers to be
potentially involved in the continuation of the project to secure its
sustainability and local hosting.
 33

As this project neared its close, MADE, the Architecture Centre

for the West Midlands organised a regional professional practice
seminar at Wragge & Co in central Birmingham to disseminate the
lessons from the project. It asked the question ‘Is the masterplan
dead?’ With 100 people attending - architects, planners,
policymakers and others working in the field of regeneration - and
54 on a reserve list, this clearly proved to be a hot topic. What
people told us was about a growing realisation that traditional
masterplanning approaches are no longer valid in many
circumstances, given the changed economic situation.

Highlighting our work along the Soho and Dudley Roads, we
demonstrated how small community-based activities can act as
catalysts for major change, explaining that this is not ‘consultation’,
but real engagement in a ’citizen-driven masterplanning’ process to
regenerate neighbourhoods.
In group sessions and plenary debate, we identified different
barriers to bringing these ideas into practice. What we found was
that:
• Local Authorities and other public bodies have difficulty
responding to and encouraging community-led practice at larger
scale, despite their willingness in principle. The danger is that the
‘small change’ led by the community and the ‘strategic change’ led
by the public and private sector remain two separate worlds.
• The planning system and recent legislative change such
as the Sustainable Communities Act offers opportunities and
35
avenues for local communities to take planning and regeneration
initiatives. The lessons in practice, however, are that both resource
constraints and the slowness of the culture change process within
the planning system make such innovation difficult to achieve.
• However, for Local Authorities to play their ‘place-shaping for
local well-being’ role and duty successfully, the openness to
community initiative – and avenues for these to feed into the
statutory planning system – is crucial.
• Supporting local communities has to happen by many parties
– the local voluntary and community sector, but also the public
sector have to provide the social glue. This requires a new set of
local ‘community entrepreneurial’ roles – which could be played by
Neighbourhood Managers or Community Development Trusts, for
example. This has to be about more than ‘crime and grime’ – it is
about supporting people in neighbourhoods to take these roles for
themselves instead of depending on public sector ‘management’ in
the long term.
 36

So, is the masterplan dead? The majority view was that

masterplanning isn’t dead but that ‘the masterplan’ may well be -
at least where existing residential neighbourhoods are concerned.
So, a new approach to planning for neighbourhood regeneration
needs help to evolve and take a facilitating role at the local level.

Firstly, it should invest more strongly to address unequal

community capacity, to acknowledge community divisions
and identify routes to overcome these and to build the local
communication and engagement platforms that build everyday
capacity to participate. Secondly, the connection between ‘small
change’ and the strategic level needs to be strengthened. This
means resourcing local initiative through targeted support – from
providing micro-finance to encouraging volunteers to ‘time-bank’,
and from attractive ‘one-stop shops’ to support local ideas to
facilitating actual collaborative plan-writing of statutory documents
such as Supplementary Planning Guidance. Only in this way can
the abstract ‘masterplan’ become the shared ‘Neighbourhood
Plan’.
 37

Capturing the meanings of a place from the narrators of lived

experiences in a neighbourhood is a fresh approach to informing
urban interventions. It builds on local stories, engagements,
and experiences that have shaped the identity of the area from
the perspective of people’s senses, memories and imagination.
Planning and regeneration currently aren’t fully responsive to the
richness and complexities of communities’ place engagement, and
that needs to change.

Because, whilst in some circumstances ‘the masterplan’ may be

dead, planning certainly isn’t. The regeneration of neighbourhoods
for inclusive opportunity, prosperity and sustainability requires
a smart planning process – but it can and must be a more open
process, tapping into a wider range of human resources. ‘Mass
localism’ as a way of changing local capacity to act requires a
different role for citizens: as active co-producers of local plans
and ideas instead of as ‘consumers’ of local services who are
‘consulted’ about their complaints.
 38

In our fast-moving world, mobility of people both on a daily basis
and through migration from place to place is a crucial characteristic
of our economy. But in local neighbourhoods, the balance between
such dynamism and the local quality of life is a subtle one – whilst
most of us would not want to live in never-changing villages, full
social fragmentation is not desirable either.
What was also evident is the urgency of the task - local people
want to see things happening and want to feel that support for
them telling their stories and ideas is genuine. In the context of
increasing engagement fatigue and distrust of the political and
policy process, a number of quick-win catalysts could make a
tangible difference.

In a ‘super-diverse’ Britain, we need touchpoints for sharing

experiences, and shared platforms for the exchange of stories and
dreams. And in turn, these stories and dreams need support to
grow into viable neighbourhood regeneration delivery. Sometimes
this may be about new buildings, but just as often it is about
what happens in and around the existing built fabric: our streets,
underused public spaces and vacant buildings. Supporting citizens
to improve urban life in neighbourhoods is a task that needs to
be better understood by professionals. This requires a shift in
professional capabilities and skills to take on new neighbourhood
roles.

The Do – Dream – Pledge identity for a local website will form a
tangible legacy for the project. It answers the need for collective
platforms and forms part of an exploration of new place-shaping
tools needed to steer urban change in a changing and resource-
constrained world.
The priorities for next steps in the study area are:
• the completion of the Do – Dream – Pledge
website including its design, governance and daily
moderation, with an effective editorial board,
and embedded in a sustainable local structure
such as Neighbourhood Management and local
participation forums.
• a training programme for community journalists
to play an important role in reaching out,
collecting stories and facilitating the ongoing local
engagement in place-shaping and regeneration.
40
• integrating the Sense of Place approach with
ongoing and future regeneration projects like
the production and delivery of the A41 Strategic
Regeneration Framework and the Ladyport
Masterplan, to create participative neighbourhood
plans that straddle the ‘community’ and strategic
(or statutory) levels.
• linking the project outcomes into the Total
Place pilot and the Neighbourhood Management
programmes of the Local Strategic Partnerships
(Be Birmingham and the Sandwell Partnership)5 to
ensure linkage to innovation in local public service
and policymaking across the spectrum of what
matters in people’s everyday lives.
• embedding the project recommendations in the
Urban Living legacy strategy.
As we are writing this document, these steps are
already being developed.

But the lessons from this study are also relevant for
many other places in the UK. In the context of the current
recession, the challenging budget constraints and the no doubt
difficult road to recovery, if we want to succeed in creating
meaningful improvement to people’s lives and livelihoods in their
local neighbourhoods, then we need to focus on three steps:
• Creating and strengthening, with local people, a wide range
of local, ‘peer-to-peer’ communication platforms to
reinvigorate the local debate about people’s amazing stories, their
needs, ideas, dreams, aspirations and resources whilst making
sure that such local debates bridge across the social divisions
that exist in a super-diverse Britain. These communication
platforms could take different shapes according to local needs
and opportunities, and range from community websites or digital
community noticeboards to community hubs co-located with local
public services or newspapers produced by community journalists.
41
• Investing in the support structures that can encourage the
transformation of local ideas into citizen-driven projects, to create
a ‘We Will If You Will’ partnership between Local Authorities and
other public bodies with the public. These support structures can
range from innovative Neighbourhood Management roles to social
enterprises like Community TimeBanks and peer-to-peer skills
and tool exchanges, and from micro-finance schemes like the
Government’s Community Shares6 pilot to Community Development
Trust and asset devolution projects.
• Creating stronger links between, on the one hand, the
innovation going on in local communities (sometimes referred to
as the ‘social economy’ or ‘civic economy’) and on the other hand
the formal structures of planning and regeneration, to open up the
creation of regeneration frameworks like Supplementary Planning
Documents and Area Action Plans to community initiative and
the ‘We Will If You Will’ partnership – in other words, we need to
support and resource the translation of local, small-scale change
into strategic change.
 dream
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pledge
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dream
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dream do
pledge pledge
do dream do

dream

pledge

pledge

dream do
dream
43

Appendix 1 : mapping activities
Mapping 1
Community Mapping Exercise
When: 10 -12 August 2009
Where: Dudley Road
Over one day a small team used a portable, hand-made scale map,
postcards and simple diagrams in order to create initial contact
and build networks with people in the area.
Participants - Approximately 30 people including men, women and
young people who were in the Dudley Road area either as residents
or visitors.
Mapping 2
Sight & Sound Workshop
When: 12, 13 & 20 November 2009
Where: Rookery Road Primary School, Soho Road area
The Sight & Sound workshop used photography and participatory
music compositions to engage children in order to uncover
personal narratives and expressions about place, aspirations and
ideas of belonging. Children were encouraged to take photographs
of their area exploring places that they like or dislike etc.
Photographs were brought back into the group and used to develop
lyrics for personal musical compositions.
Participants - Approximately 30 year 4 students from the Rookery
Road School.
44
Mapping 3
Canal Field Trip
When: 30th August
Where: Birmingham Main Line Canal between Birmingham and
Smethwick
The field trip looked at geographic context for the study area and
potential industrial heritage linkages, using PSP digital recorders.
Informal conversations were held with walkers along canal towpath
about their place attachment and use of the canal.
Participants - Approximately 15 walkers along the canal towpath.
Mapping 4
Shopkeepers and Restaurant Staff Stories
When: 15th October
Where: Soho Road
A series of qualitative interviews to capture place memories, place
attachment and sense of involvement in how the area is changing
with a wide range of shopkeepers and restaurant staff.
Participants - 28 Shopkeepers and restaurant staff from 9
establishments.

Mapping 5
Games Engagement and Digital Field Research sessions
When: 26 - 30th October
Where: Soho Youth Projects, Summerfield Community Centre,
Dudley Road
Introductory gaming sessions about place experiences were used
as an ‘ice breaker’ to introduce young people to the Sense of Place
project; then field research was undertaken with the young people
and accompanying youth workers, using PSP digital recorders and
digital cameras to capture young peoples’ views, images, stories
about life and aspirations on and around the Dudley Road.
Participants - Approximately 20 young people, boys and girls,
attending the youth club.
Mapping 6
Soho Road and Dudley Road mappings
When: various days in October
Where: Soho Road and Dudley Road
Building on Mapping 1, we walked the length of both roads, using
different techniques including a street performance, a ‘Cabinet
of Curiosities’ that collected stories and objects from passers-by/
local workers. We interviewed people and took photos of specific
statements they made.
Participants - People were attracted to the ‘spectacle’ of the
45
cabinet and we collected over 80 additional stories/comments. We
engaged a good cross-section of the community in terms of age,
gender, locality and ethnicity.
Mapping 7
Businesses and community organisations
When: Between 21st September - 4th November,
Where: Soho Road and Dudley Road
The conversations consisted of structured in-depth interviews
and informal drop-in interviews. We collected ‘amazing stories’ of
the area regarding individuals and organisations’ sense of place,
place action and dreams for the future. The interviews focussed on
developing a wider understanding of social dynamics in the area
and the issues that aid and hinder collective civic action
Participants - 30 local businesses and third sector organisations
on and between Soho and Dudley Road with a cross section of
organisational type and ethnicity. The third sector organisations
include The Refugee Resource Centre, Summerfield Park Friends
& Neighbours, New Style Community Radio Station, Soho Road
Traders Association, Asian Resource Centre, Matthew Boulton
Neighbourhood Forum, Lodge Park Residents Society, Midlands
Vietnamese Refugee Community Association, Novas Scarman
Development Agency, Bishop Latimer Church and the costume
makers for the Soho Road carnival. The businesses range from
clothes shops, corner shops, bakeries, landlords, to kitchen table
entrepreneurs.
 46
Appendix 2 : catalyst event

Catalyst Event 1 : Catalyst event 2 :

The Living Room The Community Journalist Taster Workshop
Saturday 23 January 2010, 10am – 3pm Saturday 23 January 2010, 10am – 12pm
Soho Road, Car Park in front of KFC and Handsworth Library Community Room, Handsworth Library

• A seating area was created using the furniture decorated by At the workshop we piloted the toolkit and community journalist
pupils at Rookery School as well as that taken from the Ladywood scheme.
Furniture Project and recycled furniture from paperpod.co.uk Participants - Approximately 20-25 people participated, from local
• Activities took place in a marquee on the car park, relating to community organizations as well as local residents with over half
local pride and making change in the local area: of the participants saying on feedback forms they were interested
‘Make your own recycled planters’ in being involved in the project.
‘Take away a free tree for a pledge’
‘Pledge Tree - make a pledge to make a difference’
‘Sign up to the Birmingham Street Champions Scheme’
‘Tell us where you would like to have new seating’
• The Boathouse Café distributed coffee/refreshments.
• Launch of the Street Champions Scheme by Tracey Thorne,
Neighbourhood Manager in the Handsworth Library Community
Room.
Participants - Approximately 30-35 people, from a wide range of
ethnic, religious and geographical backgrounds, took part in the
event’s activities plus lots more passers-by that stopped for a chat
and a cup of tea.

33 pledges were made about local neighbourhood improvements.

 47
Appendix 3 : endnotes

1. Department for Communities and Local Government: “Improv-
ing outcomes? Engaging local communities in the NDC programme
- Some lessons from the New Deal for Communities Programme”
(Oct 2009):
http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/communities/
pdf/1345819.pdf
3. Gerry Hassan, Melissa Mean and Charlie Tims: “The Dreaming
City: Glasgow 2020 And the Power of Mass Imagination (2007):
http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/thedreamingcity
PledgeBank website:
http://www.pledgebank.com/

Sarah Townsend, Regeneration & Renewal: “Report: little proof of 4. FixMyStreet website:
NDCs empowering locals” (12 Oct 2009). http://www.fixmystreet.com/

Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment: CABE Harringay Online Community:
Housing Audits (2004-2006): http://www.harringayonline.com/
http://www.cabe.org.uk/housing/audit
5. Total Place website:
CABE “No More Toxic Assets – Fresh Thinking on Housing Quality http://www.localleadership.gov.uk/totalplace/
(March 2009):
http://www.cabe.org.uk/publications/no-more-toxic-assets 6. Community Shares website:
http://www.communityshares.org.uk/
2. Garanti Gallery: “Mapping Istanbul” (2009):
http://projectprojects.com/mapping-istanbul/
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