Austerity. The shift in the economic landscape of the recent past has replaced the narrative of the possible with tougher language. Financial restraint, and difficult choices form the infrastructure of this world view. A recent report by the Centre for Cities¹ suggests that a re-balancing of the economy with the private sector as the lead agent is likely to be differentiated geographically. Not everywhere will form a significant part of the new private sector landscape of economic growth. It will be uneven. This suggests that some places will be the preferred location of growth for a variety of reasons; history, competitive advantage, luck. Other places will lose out, through no fault of their own. It’s just a case of circumstance and market dynamics. It’s the way the world is and we have to learn to live with it. This is a powerful world view. The world though, is a complex place.

In the 1960s Gordon Cullen wrote a book called ‘Townscapes’². This was written in part as a reaction to the imposition of a new design language onto traditional settlements. Cullen’s view was that the results were leading to a deterioration of distinctiveness, and civic life. The radicalism of modernism, powerful and pervasive as the narrative of the time was being challenged. Cullen was primarily interested in the visual character of urban places. He studied this phenomenon, and illustrated it beautifully. His eye roamed the urban landscape, its prized spaces, ordinary spaces and the folds and crevices in between. His studies led him to conclude that a town is about the ‘art of relationships’. This in turn contributed to a new form of practice in architecture and the discourse of how we make places.

The thing with relationships is that they are complex. Augé in ‘Non Places: An Introduction to an Anthropology of Hypermodernity³’ suggests that there are three key characteristics underpinning the notion of ‘place’; history, relations and identity. Relations form, relations change. The spaces in between can often be rich ground for innovation and creativity. Perhaps this is because of the freedom of not being one thing or the other. Perhaps it is because of pragmatism, making the best of what’s available. Perhaps it is because the space in between encourages participation and collaboration, the process of creating new relationships. Whatever the answer, we have a lot of in between spaces; neighbourhoods, districts and towns whose economic purpose has changed.

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They are neither what they were, nor are they necessarily spaces that will form a significant part of the narrative of the new private sector economic landscape. They are in between. What is their future, and the future of the people who occupy these spaces?

Perhaps one future is a creative think about the opportunities in between-ness provides. These places have assets. They have people, spaces and a sense of place that are distinct resources for learning, colonisation, and engagement. Perhaps a future for these places is about enabling platforms for participation, collaboration and a new pragmatism. These platforms could enable communities to coalesce around ways of doing things, of developing innovative solutions to problems in creative ways. For example, A+DS through the Senses of Place programme has been exploring the potential of the whole town⁴ as a learning resource. This builds on work in Dumfries which sought to understand how the Curriculum for Excellence, the Scottish Government policy on learning might look like in the built environment.

A+DS “Senses of Place: Scottish Learning Towns” from David Hutchison on Vimeo.

If we see the learning potential of the spaces and places in our towns and villages, and if we build trust in using these spaces creatively, we can re-view every action in these settlements in terms of their learning potential. Children understand this intuitively. When asked to describe their idea of a school, a child in Orkney said that the ‘island is our school’ ⁵. Everyday, these children participate in that idea. Every movement to school through the rich and varied landscape is a learning experience that is distinct to that place. This is an asset in itself that can form a new narrative for how we see existing places.

This view is perhaps an issue of culture. The idea of a more open and shared approach to tackling the problems of our time, between citizens and institutions for example, and of creating new opportunities is informing the culture of a range of practice; from learning and innovation, to public art, to placemaking and service design. For example, the Service Design Conference 2010⁶ set out a range of thinking about how futures might organise better around a user and participatory focus; futures where enabling networks, fostering trust and respecting shared values are essential. These futures are about exploring new business models, new means of supporting people in their lives, new ways of discourse. They grow best in the in-between spaces of our world, the spaces between products and services, the spaces of social networks on the world wide web, the spaces between policy and delivery, and the in-between spaces of our towns, cities and villages.
Speirs Locks is a neighbourhood of north Glasgow where these ideas are starting to take hold. The area is an important element of the regeneration landscape of Glasgow.

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It is in-between the city, the motorway and the canal. In this context, it is both part of and disconnected from the city. Speirs Locks has been the subject of masterplanning, and more recently a flexible and creative regeneration framework developed by 7N architects called ‘Growing the Place’. As part of this work, 7N Collaborated with Rankin Fraser Architects to deliver the ‘Metal Petals’⁷ installation in the underpass of the motorway which recently won design awards and accolades.

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The client group for Speirs Locks, the Glasgow Canals Partnership have delivered a new emergent arts venue in the Glue Factory. Creative change is happening here and making a difference.

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As part of a national initiative, Speirs Locks achieved Scottish Sustainable Communities Status [SSCI]. Under this initiative, an action plan for the creative economy of the area was developed by David Barrie and Associates working with A+DS. The focus of this work is on the people action that will deliver a creative economy in this part of the city. Accordingly, it was called ‘Growing the People’. ‘Growing the People’⁸ suggests Speirs Locks builds upon the activity of its existing cultural industry tenants around the themes of ‘creating, making and doing: the production of ideas, goods and services that have social, creative and economic value’, a place for new social businesses, provision of studios and workspaces for creative industries and new community enterprise.

Spiers Locks from David Hutchison on Vimeo.

• extensive engagement with the communities in the local area and in the city of Glasgow;
• the exceptional artisan skills of performing arts companies resident on site;
• keen demand from stakeholders that the site generate near-term economic and educational value,
• a desire to support community life and address social need through innovation, and;
• a sense from all of those consulted that energetic and creative activity needs to be triggered to effect real sustainable change.

Linking the spatial, social and economic elements of the work developed for Speirs Locks to date, ‘Growing the People’ suggests a programme of creative action based on three types of entrepreneurship

• Channel 1: Strategic entrepreneurship [encouraging creative business]
• Channel 2: Social entrepreneurship [enterprise for social purpose]
• Channel 3: Community entrepreneurship [community enterprise, incubator industries]

These broad Channels of work inform more specific actions which include exploring the feasibility of developing a ‘Cultural Improvement District’ based on the ‘Business Improvement Model’; development of shared workspaces and networked community infrastructure to support small and micro businesses; adaptation of existing buildings for creative uses and programmes aligned to community need, capacities and opportunity. The plan recommends management of the programme by a curator or creative director – what Professor Stephen Goldsmith of Harvard Kennedy School has called a ‘network integrator’.

The basic principle for Speirs Locks is a creative rethink of how the area could be, how it could support communities creating and doing things together. The enabling of this future requires interaction, participation and collaboration. This may be the basis of an alternative approach to placemaking, which links social networking, social enterprise and creativity, an Opensource Placemaking ⁹. This is an approach to urban development that centres on the making of an implementable ‘social action plan’ first – not a master plan – is inspired by the autonomy that many people want from their lives and seeks to create places through an unfolding process of interaction design first, building design second. This is about individuals and communities creatively collaborating across a variety of networks. It is an issue not only of culture but human potential, human capital.
Professor Ann Markusen, Fulbright Professor at Glasgow School of Art suggests that there is a need for renewed debate on human capital in the discourse of economics. She argues that this should include studying how industries and occupations form and operate, how state and local governments fund and supply public services, which kinds of spending have long term growth impacts, and how consumers at different ages, locations, and levels of educational attainment and wealth spend their incomes. She argues that the arts have a central role to play in local and regional economies; that central to this is an understanding of the supportive communities that foster arts, culture and innovation. Relationships are central. In between spaces enable relationships to form. Perhaps these spaces, and a creative, open, participative and collaborative culture can form rich ground for new ways of seeing the future of our places.

¹ http://www.centreforcities.org/assets/files/10-09-16%20Firm%20Intentions.pdf

² http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Cullen

³ http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LMr8_pXJgdwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=anthropology+of+supermodernity&source=bl&ots=-fzpM1zaeD&sig=yPg1XtrBFqx5wIYy5NVph43B5k&hl=en&ei=_pwsTbXgIs2whQeRxoGrCw&sa=X&oi=bookresult&ct=result&resnum=4&sqi=2&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false

⁴ http://www.ads.org.uk/news/770_scottish-learning-towns

⁵ The comment comes from the Senses of Place project that was run by The Lighthouse a few years ago looking at school design. The facilitator, Sam Cassels, is now the Design Advisor on the Schools programme.

⁶ http://www.service-design-network.org/content/service-design-conference-2010-berlin

⁷ http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/flower-power-1.1037997

⁸ http://www.ads.org.uk/news/756_spiers-locks

⁹ http://www.ads.org.uk/reports_studies/758_open-source-placemaking

¹⁰ http://stopbcartscuts.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/the-economics-of-arts-artists-and-culture-making-a-better-case-by-ann-markusen/