Shaping Our Spaces

Empowering Young People to Help Build More Resilient Communities

Foreword

Shaping Our Spaces is a pilot creative project supported by Architecture & Place at The Scottish Government through a 2016- 2017 grant award.

The principal rationale behind supporting the pilot creative project was the direct links to The Scottish Government consultation on the review of the planning system in Scotland, in particular the role of young people, and also the use of the Place Standard themes in the engagement. This consultation took place between March and April 2017.

Background

Shaping Our Spaces is a creative project delivered in partnership between Pidgin Perfect and Young Scot on behalf of The Scottish Government.

The project explored the inclusion of young people in decision-making processes around the built environment to reveal new perspectives on important issues, develop new opportunities for design thinking and to influence intergovernmental processes and policy-making.

Shaping Our Spaces places particular focus on the decision-making processes related to large scale regeneration projects. The project tests the application of design and cultural activities to empower the voices of young people within regeneration projects. There is much evidence to support that major regeneration projects in Scotland have contributed to increasing rates of local employment, improved local facilities, promoted the benefits of health and wellbeing as well as increasing access to arts and culture. Hence, it is vital that young people - of all ages and socio-economic backgrounds, are actively involved with these projects to ensure they best represent the community they serve.

The project acknowledges that the ease of accessibility to new and disruptive technologies, from smartphones to “open data”, for young people presents unprecedented opportunities for peerto-peer sharing of ideas and information around the built environment.

Pidgin Perfect and Young Scot believe that when young people perform the role of active citizens that they have the power to creating pressure to open-up the way in which important decisions are made. With this in mind, the project explored how young people in Scotland, where the impact of huge and recent social and political upheaval is being felt, can use these platforms to influence the decisionmaking around their built environment.

Through Shaping Our Spaces, Pidgin Perfect and Young Scot directly developed creative strategies with a wide variety of young people through formal design processes and informal dialogue. Exploring potential ways of widening access to information and encouraging the active participation and contribution of young people across Scotland with policy and decision making through the National Planning Framework, as well as through existing devices such as the Place Standard Toolkit.

Shaping Our Spaces aims to support and expand upon the public consultation, ‘Places, People and Planning: A consultation on the future of the Scottish planning system’ delivered by The Scottish Government in early 2017. This current consultation on planning includes thinking around how best to support the empowerment of people to participate in the planning system. Shaping Our Spaces specifically supports and focuses on how best to engage young people, identified as a hard to reach group, through creative activities which increase opportunities and points of access to participate.

Methodology

The project methodology for Shaping Our Spaces was inspired by research undertaken by Marc Cairns, Managing Director at Pidgin Perfect, across 2016 as a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust (WCMT) Fellow.

During this fellowship, Marc travelled to Albania, Serbia, Kosovo, Turkey and Azerbaijan to visit examples of innovative creative projects encouraging and supporting young people to become more active citizens within their built environment. On returning to Scotland, and on behalf of Pidgin Perfect, Marc approached Young Scot to collaborate on an experimental creative project that would live test lessons learned from his fellowship.

After an extensive period of research, discussion and co-design workshops between Pidgin Perfect and Young Scot funding was sourced from Architecture and Place at The Scottish Government to deliver a pilot event to directly test ideas with young people.

On Saturday 18th March 2017, ten young people (aged 16-21) from across Scotland - Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Montrose - gathered at Many Studios in the East End of Glasgow for the ‘Shaping Our Spaces’ event day.

The emphasis of the event was to bring together a diverse cohort of young people to primarily use creative tools and making to explore the topic. The event was designed around creating an experimental environment rather than a programme of lectures and invited experts and young people discussed the their experiences, opinions and ideas as equals.

Following on from introductory discussions and an exercise which mapped the opportunities and challenges of participating in the planning process, the signature activity was a visit to Sighthill in North Glasgow - the largest regeneration project in the UK outside of London. At Sighthill, the cohort explored the site and met with members of the Sighthill Community Group to gain, first hand, an understanding of the experience of living, working, studying and playing in a shaping space. Inspired by and in collaboration with the community the young people designed and installed three large scale PVC banners to the perimeter fencing of the construction site with the banners serving as a canvas for them to consolidate their thoughts as well as proposing questions around governance and participation to the local community through public art intervention.

The creative intervention at Sighthill opened up space for the young people to engage with the site and discussion topics through hands-on and visual approaches, and allowed for freeform observations and responses to the issues. The intervention centred on construction-style materials to create visual impact and to relate directly to the setting. Young people were encouraged to devise visuals or slogans and to make these in a spontaneous way with spray-paints, markets and cable-ties. The non-precious elements of this approach and spontaneity were designed to provoke 7 conversation and emphasise the process of making rather than the outcome.

Equipped with the unique experience of visiting Sighthill, the group returned to Many Studios and explored creating their very own ‘call to action’ banners to take away and install within their own communities.

The journey mapping activity asked the participants to consider their potential involvement in the planning process and where they could provide meaningful input. This split the timeline of the development into three categories over a five year period - before, during and after. There were two groups who discussed their ideas and then these were marked up on a sheet to help map out their thoughts and ideas.

The creative activity at Many Studios used screen-printing techniques to make banners that connected and consolidated the discussions and experiences of the other parts of the day. Participants were able to learn a new practical creative skill whilst reflecting on their experiences at Sighthill and their own places. For this activity, it was important that the participants could create something to take-away, to connect what they had discussed and learned with their everyday experiences. Each of the young people created their own design and used stencils and screen-printing to create this ‘call to action’ banner.

Emerging Themes

Through the delivery of Shaping Our Spaces, Pidgin Perfect and Young Scot learned from young people across Scotland the following;

• Young people that are invited to participate in planning activities are often directly accessed through education environments and this hence excludes a wide range of people aged 16 - 25 years old.

• Young people are often only invited to explore the past and the heritage of spaces that are shaping as part of participatory planning activities.

• Young people do not understand, or have little access to the correct information, how to get involved in the decision making process around their built environment. Even those who are studying architecture and planning have little awareness of the routes to involvement.

• Supporting young people to visit and experience shaping spaces can have a significant positive impact on their understanding of the scale and complexity of major regeneration and community development projects.

• Providing young people with an opportunity to engage directly, and as an equal, with community members, planning professionals and other stakeholders will further their knowledge, passion and personal connection to projects that are shaping spaces around the places they live, work, study and play. Especially if the process is a tactile and sense based experience.

• Establishing youth led advocate programmes within community settings would better engage a broad range of young people who feel excluded from participating in community wide activities that typically engage ‘the usual suspects’ and older audiences.

These learning outcomes from Shaping Our Spaces presented emerging themes to Pidgin Perfect and Young Scot with regards to how to better the inclusion of young people in decision-making processes around the built environment in Scotland.

The three key emerging themes were:

• The use of informal and formal creative activities were a successful method for young people to vocalise their opinions and provide their input into local decisionmaking processes.

• Taking young people to visit significant transformational regeneration projects provided them with first hand insight and knowledge of the experience of living, working, studying and playing within these spaces.

• Meeting people, especially young people, who have been living within significant transformational regeneration projects was a powerful tool to encourage young people to feel emboldened to become more active citizens and generate opinions with regards to the decision-making processes around the built environment.

Pidgin Perfect and Young Scot believe that if Scottish Government integrated these three themes into future participatory projects for young people that their inclusion in decision-making processes around the built environment will reveal new perspectives on important issues, develop new opportunities for design thinking and influence intergovernmental processes and policy-making.

Pidgin Perfect and Young Scot believe that embracing these three themes will have significant benefit for young people and planning professionals across Scotland.

• Increased confidence, a sense of empowerment and raised aspirations for making sustainable change within Scotland.

• Development of new adaptable skills, experiences and qualifications.

• Improved resilience, health and wellbeing.

• Greater awareness and understanding of decision-making processes and influence at a local and national level.

• Increased access to information, resources and activities on how to engage positively with their built environment.

• Increased confidence in how to involve and seed power and responsibility to communities, particularly young people.

• Increased meaningful formal and informal engagement with young people where there is shared responsibility for outcomes.

• Sensitised understanding and increased reach within local communities.

• Strengthen the connection between young people with their communities including improved, targeted, effective and sustainable information designed and reviewed by young people.

• New approaches to service innovation to be continually viewed as a world-leading example by putting young people at the heart of decision-making processes.

Recommendations

In the short term, Pidgin Perfect and Young Scot recommend that the learning outcomes and emerging themes provided through the delivery of Shaping Our Spaces are taken into consideration when analysing and evaluating the outcomes of ‘Places, People and Planning: A consultation on the future of the Scottish planning system’ delivered by The Scottish Government in early 2017.

In the long term, Pidgin Perfect and Young Scot anticipate that the delivery of further stand alone events and new iterations of Shaping Our Spaces will create a body of evidence to support the development of a wider national programme.

This programme would work to place young people at the heart of efforts to improve the spaces where they live, work, study and play and support them through creative activities to have a positive involvement with sustainable regeneration initiatives within their own communities.

Shaping Our Spaces is a creative project that has the opportunity to create platforms for young people to come together to provide their insights, share their experiences with their peers, with professionals and other agencies as well as supporting innovation and good practice within the planning sector across Scotland.

As with many other international best practice examples, Shaping Our Spaces could become a conduit to create youth advocacy panels within significant regeneration projects; ensuring that the concerns and opinions of young people are central to development plans and placemaking projects across Scotland.

Reflections

Shaping Our Spaces was a creative project that investigated ways which would support young people across Scotland to have increased opportunities to shape and influence services and activities related to their built environment.

The success of this creative project was providing an opportunity for young people to have increased access to information to help them better understand and develop positive relationships with the built environment in Scotland. The creative project provided a framework for the young people engaged to make positive future choices that would better connect them to, and allow them to benefit from, their built environment and hence improve their lives and their well-being. Through Shaping Our Spaces the achievements of the young people who attended the event were celebrated and shared both online and with planning professionals. Pidgin Perfect and Young Scot believe that this will inspire others to become involved in activities that support, engage and share responsibility of improving the built environment in Scotland.

What would we have changed?

What would we have done better?

What will we do differently next time?

The collaboration between Pidgin Perfect and Young Scot demo demonstrated a strong model for future activity where two organisations who are experts at engaging with young people were brought together to work on a topic where there is a distinct need for young people to be involved more.

The creative elements of the day were important in fostering informal discussion and questioning, and allowing the participants to respond in visual and tactile ways. For future activity, longer full-day creative sessions would be helpful, by allowing more time for the designgeneration process. Similarly, longer sessions would encourage the participants to become more comfortable with these new creative techniques, and to explore ways to use these to create thoughtful and layered responses to the issues and develop potential for impact.

A promotional flyer for the Shaping Our Spaces workshop was shared with all of Young Scot’s contacts. These contacts included youth organisations, youth groups, universities, colleges and current volunteers. The workshop was promoted via Young Scot’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, and also on the Young Scot Things To Do page.

The recruitment for the workshop worked well in reaching young people who were already engaged in the topic, such as architecture students. Current Young Scot volunteers were also interested in the workshop as the topic was related to other projects they were working on.

For future promotion, the way in which we communicate the project to young people who do not already have a knowledge of the topic could be improved by using language that is relevant to their other interests not just to those already engaged. By doing this it will ensure a more diverse 17 range of young people’s views and ideas on the planning process are heard.

Below is a representative range of participant feedback gathered during the event on Saturday 18th May:

“This was an informative and engaging workshop. Good balance between discussion and activity. More things like this should happen.”

“No jargon. Plain speaking conversations. This really helped.”

“What struck me about the workshop was the idea of getting involved in the local community.”

“The spray painting was unusual but really made me thinking about what I wanted to say and why I wanted to say it.”

“My key point that I’m taking away with me today is to make sure your voice is heard and make sure someone listens, because that’s the way change happens. One voice can do a lot.”

“The key thing I’m taking from today, back to my studies as an architect, is just to ask people and listen to them to see what they need and to try and look at the bigger picture.”

“A key moment from this morning is when we went to Sighthill and we spoke to Jean about the area and how it has been affected by the development.”

“I think the site visit was excellent and getting to speak to Jean, who is a resident of Sighthill, was incredibly useful. It gives a different perspective of the whole process.”

Future Actions

Pidgin Perfect and Young Scot propose the following future actions to conclude and further develop the creative project, Shaping Our Spaces:

Presentation by Marc Cairns (Managing Director at Pidgin Perfect) and Paul Gaul (Co-design Manager at Young Scot) on the initial outcomes of Shaping Our Spaces to interested parties at the Making Place seminar hosted by The Scottish Government at The Lighthouse on Thursday 30th March 2017.

Dissemination and broadcasting of filmic content produced during Shaping Our Spaces across the social media platforms and websites for Pidgin Perfect and Young Scot in June 2017. This filmic content will include a short liner film illustrating the activities that took place during the Shaping Our Spaces event on Saturday 18th March 2017 as well as brief clips from interviews with the young people who attended the event.

Pidgin Perfect and Young Scot will meet with The Scottish Government in June 2017 to discuss the emerging themes, recommendations and reflections outlined in this report.

Pidgin Perfect and Young Scot will identify, with the support of Scottish Government, opportunities to revisit and develop the creative project Shaping Our Spaces further within site specific significant transformational regeneration projects and with a local audience of young people.

Acknowledgements

Marc Cairns - Managing Director

Nikki Kane - Project Manager

Paul Gault - Codesign Manager

Catriona Binnie - Codesign Support

Lewis Carr- Communications Assistant

Ryan McDonagh, 18, Glasgow

Davie McKinnon, 16, Angus

Gordon Cleary, 17, Glasgow

Zara Akhtar, 17, Edinburgh

Lucy Fisher, 21, Aberdeen

Nathaniel Campbell, 21 Aberdeen

Barbara Walicka, 21, Aberdeen

Iga Swiercz, 21, Glasgow

Anna Macpherson, 19, Dundee

Blair Boyle, 19, Dundee

Sandy Robinson

Jean Monaghan

Natalia Palombo

About Pidgin Perfect

Pidgin Perfect is an award winning creative consultancy working internationally on a wide range of creative events, development programmes and placemaking projects.

Pidgin Perfect was founded by Dele Adeyemo (Atelier Jean Nouvel, Paris), Marc Cairns (Studio Daniel Libeskind, New York) and Becca Thomas (Collective Architecture, Glasgow).

Since 2011, they have worked with clients such as Architecture & Design Scotland, Balfour Beatty, British Council, Historic England, Marine Scotland, Scottish Wildlife Trust, National Theatre of Scotland, Scottish Book Trust and The Scottish Government to place the community at the heart of their projects.

In addition to their work at home, they have received a number of major international commissions – representing Scotland at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale, presenting projects at the 2012 World Design Capital Helsinki, 2014 World Design Capital Cape Town, 2014 Commonwealth Games, British Council UK/Nigeria Season 2015-16, 2016 Lahore Biennale and in 2017, London Festival of Architecture and Prishtina Architecture Week.

Their dynamic and multi-disciplinary team have a broad depth of expertise in urbanism, design, business development, creative engagement, public art and curation.

From their office in Glasgow they engage diverse communities in the process of change; using design and cultural activity to create connections between people and place to build more resilient communities for everyone.

www.pidginperfect.com

About Young Scot

Young Scot is the national youth information and citizenship agency for Scotland, and currently has a membership of over 653,000 young people across Scotland.

Young Scot provides all young people in Scotland aged 11-26 with information, ideas and incentives to enable them to make informed decisions and choices, turn their ideas into action and take advantage of opportunities available throughout Scotland and Europe.

Our co-design service involves young people systematically creating, designing and delivering solutions in collaboration with organisations.

Young people are involved much earlier in decision making process through a highly participative approach developing informed insights, ideas, recommendations and solutions for policy and practice.

Supporting people to co-design ideas has been shown to have a radical impact on service innovation. We know using a co-design approach enables a more distributed, decentralised approach to innovation that supports Scotland’s ambitions to cede power and responsibility directly to young people.

young.scot

The national youth information portal for Scotland

youngscot.net

Young Scot’s corporate website