Leeds City Lab Research Project (What could a city co-production lab be for Leeds?) WORKSHOP 2: HOW CAN WE USE THE ‘CITY WORKSHOP’ CONCEPT TO PROMOTE NEW IDEAS AND COLLABORATIVE WORKING FOR THE REGENERATION OF LEEDS? ACTIVITY 1: WORLD CAFE a.) Activities: What kind of activities can happen here and how are they different to activities we normally do at work? -
Design workshops Development/regen focus Neutral space May depend on layout/facilities Table tops/floor to form map of the city Sole traders Focus groups e.g. kids/digitial Work skill swap Timebank space Space to talk Not a conventional meeting room Performance Digital Screen Curated space for young people By community groups, meetings/workshops – can flow into the Tetley Shared space for neighbourhood groups e.g. Neighbourhood plans Bring people to South Bank Good to mix groups Inclusive Small room for maps to write on with laminate layers Need interactive audio visual kit Replicate mobile rooms across cities Encourage face to face of very different groups High tech easy to use to redesign city – creative space facilitated and rebuild with blocks/models Extend participants through Twitter For ‘Rent’ – payment by ideas for the city
Exciting: Spill out into rest of Tetley – be inspired by other spaces, coming out of corporate world, being allowed to be more creative and collaborative, not abiding by rules
Difficult – hard to visualise what activities without knowing what kind of kit, actually let’s have lots of different flexible spaces – jigsaw tables, maps, layering on tables Should we have more across the city? Should we be using libraries and community centres? Would you charge rent? Don’t pay monetary rent – pay by ideas. Just talking about what you’d like the city to be, a problem you’d like to help solve – this is payment – smartboard would record it and it would be emailed straightaway to Council.
b.) Impacts – what kinds of ideas solutions can be generated in places like this? Can they have greater public benefit than those generated in a normal workspace? -
Visibility of what’s happening in the city Accessibility Shared ideas and collaborative – ‘community feel’ Sustainability and design Engagement – building trust inclusive space Problematic – the specifics of space/more public and inviting? Exchange of knowledge Content Identity – ‘successful cities’ Popular education Civic interface – meeting room/relaxing space – Cultural hub? Hive? Virtual-smart space Network of spaces? – Temporary spaces, formal and nomadic Building trust, inclusive space
Exciting: informal space to invite formal groups – nomadic spaces/network spaces across city – temporary infrastructure? Container? Would involve many people in neighbourhoods who aren’t involved in formal groups and wouldn’t necessarily come to Tetley – but their ideas could feed in Difficult: Accessible to social groups, more inclusive Surprising: How could it be developed through dynamic of people involved?
c.) Motives: Why do you get involved with places/event like this? What exactly attracts and excites you? -
Meetings and connections people outside our usual networks Role of LCC as an enabler Generic idea – the character of a place brings different people together – events and gatherings Uses – graffiti wall by anyone to understand, ASK community needs Uses – by networkers to establish scope for use by freelancers Uses- small groups, community organisations, individuals/citizens A passion for LEEDS
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Bringing in many different people Visualisation of ideas Building skill sets of how to work collaboratively Learning about doing things differently What do we/can we learn for each other to improve our own work Demonstration of new ways of working DEMOCRATISING EFFECT Giving power away (versus anarchy) Finding new protocols Making of an exhibition Shared info about how the city works? Data about my neighbourhood Values and politics Perception of city spaces – posh? 3D modelling – virtuocity- what;s the £model? Focuses on the visual possibility of the future – DIFFERENT
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Difficult – how to not make an ‘exhibition’ don’t over-curate, just somewhere people can feel comfortable to come, Perception – high tech, whizzy, data, not just city centre but all city Low tech? Not needing resources or skill – can high tech be intimidating? Surprising? Learn how to do things together better Not being sure what the spaces are going to be
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d.) Replicating : how can we make these kinds of places (and their impacts)
more widespread? Can they feed back into big organisations and affect the way they work? -
Rotunda Map floor in City Museum: make available as another city room when not let for events Signposting – make the facility obvious and well publicised Accessibility – Have to book? Would be good if partners could just turn up? One afternoon for ‘drop in’? In neighbourhoods, ‘hanging out’ space – get youngsters to identify Create or pick up on meeting places where people tend to congregate or pass through anyway Mobile – a bus that gets decorated by children – someone’s vintage bus? Better if accessible from the street Need spaces in neighbourhoods Use meanwhile spaces Would need supporting structures – a way of gathering key points of conversations and feeding them to e.g. Leeds City Council
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Moderation of views? Collate main points, feed through to central point to generate topical issues for taking forward – Use screen in Millennium Square – ‘City Dashboard’ Most likely to be effective if critical mass of people involved, especially if includes diversity of groups and individuals and captures popular common sense ‘Meme’ – replication by stealth, ideas going viral Leeds Citizens – use this space and provide ‘scribe’ to capture points for exploration Everyone who attends the space should spend time on shared agendas and write up ideas on white board Twitter mapping Reddit
Difficult: -
Room as it is isn’t accessible (in all ways), how available would it be, do you need to book it in advance? Would need open booking system How to capture main action points and links forward to getting these things done – in a way that reflects strong preferences – mediation system moderated by people in the city, better use of community spaces that already exist, people can see what is priority (cut through the ‘noise’ or people with louder voices – how does it get moderated?
Exciting: -
rotunda with map better used – needs more transparent booking system when it’s not being used for corporate events This part of Leeds: room in Tetley is fabulous resource for South Bank conversations Making accessible and fun and making good use of resources – BUS that visits the neighbourhoods, entices people to come in, decorated by children to make it appealing, minimal barrier to use
Surprising: -
downstairs space is better than upstairs space
General discussion: -
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Assumption: that ideas created in spaces like this are inherently sustainable? Do we need ground rules for more difficult conversations e.g if someone wants to talk about immigration? Can’t assume that lots of ideas necessarily accumulate into sustainable ideas. How to engage landowners to come voluntarily, rather than obliged?
ACTIVITY #2: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF OUR DREAM SPACE General Principles -
It’s not a public ‘stock’s It’s not a SALES office for decisions already made, It is not just an old INFO giving/taking (consultation space) > It’s about CO-PRODUCTION Activity in the space must be for the ‘public good’ Allow elements of the ‘free access’ per week within use of space High level goals to form part of overall principles Dare I say...can we have ‘curated democracy’ of is that a contradiction in terms? Public face What kind of people? Local residents + residents associations, they have a buy-in in the area already Using the space for the good of the city! Idealistic? Neutral, relaxing, setting for a meeting Get and remain excited about the prospect of south bank for people of leeds..and as it’s delivered Relevant to neighbourhoods here e.g. Hunslet, Holbeck etc Range of people, interest groups: developers, residents, people who love the city, children, landowners, neighbours, shopkeepers Generate municipal spirit, welcome retirees, no just retirees, but ‘whole’ society Primarily generating ideas not ‘consultation’ of fully fledged ideas Doing it together e.g. WITH councillors, not ‘to’ councillors What do we want to know? And what do we do with feedback? Civic interface – where the city speaks Making politics everyday Ideas postbox How do we avoid the endless replication of failing structural/systemic practices that deaden souls and kill creativity Network of spaces > problematizing the ‘mono-cultures’ > network of locations Sustainability Electronic visitors book Invite a cartoonist once a month to interpret the conversations Earn a ‘digital badge’ for taking part in a City Room conversation
MORNING -
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Breakfast meetings – issues of the day Theme of the day/week – so you know if you want to contribute Smart boards capture main points of conversation – graffiti wall Meet the council as humans o Be able to ask for advice and meet people who can your project o One to one question time Launch of neighbourhood plan Have kids walk along the river Aire then come and hear and draw dream river journeys
LUNCHTIME -
Invite all the anarchists in the area to make and serve lunch (in black tie kit of course) Near sell-by date lunches (voluntary contribution) Local produce lunches
AFTERNOON -
Accountability sessions addresses ‘Big’ Questions e.g HS2 and ‘Little’ Questions (events, Leeds, quality of life, day in the life of) Planning/urban design workshops for development proposals Hammocks for siesta Social space, play space, interactive space, film space, music space, debating space, education space – popular education Inclusive activities, where small + large organisations and people support and help each other! Free exchange – food, ideas, things/goods
LATE AFTERNOON/EARLY EVENING -
Cultural Hour (once a week) – (whose culture? small print) Timebank the space, skills swapping, share out the jobs > community responsibility Art exhibition/installation Invite people to the ‘Yorkshire Hour’ a moaning session – at the end of which you ahve to propose solutions The Leeds conversational hour! Let’s meet, let’s talk! Councillor/MP surgeries Meet the politician Bean bags, hammocks Book exchange, Tea & coffee Music Relaxed environment
EVENING -
Fun! Exhibitions and performances, celebrations of creativity! ‘I am here because I’m retired but know lots – capture my knowledge! It might be useful in your discussions’ Have Leeds united fan reunions to remember the good old days Genuine mixed uses – kids, leisure, work, food etc Time and tide – timebanking, to be promoted via the city room Classes in whatever is voted for An UNyorkshire evening news – rolling good news > local TV? Local radio? LEAVE INSPIRED
LATE -
Open it up to Air BnB – generate income, bring tourists to Leeds Night activities ‘city night’
GENERAL DISCUSSION (transcript points) -
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A place where the Council can come to be liked! Getting councillors (and officers) to want to come Identifying problems and desires rather than naming PEOPLE to be blamed – not nailing people to the wall, but to bring people in who can help solve problem A genuine free lunch?! Is it 8-9 or is it 24 hours? What do you do in return? Huge demand for spaces to be used at night - places are empty at night Visualisation of benefits Dashboard/databoard – live representation of processes o Midday everyday it updates o Is it an app? All day live feed Timebanking the space – is everyone a volunteer? What do I get from this space, if I help set it up? Physical or digital? How to we retain quality of face to face? Can we knock the wall down in upstairs space to open it up? How can this space reach more people? People like to physically come somewhere – offers something different to a website How will it have wider appeal? Use Tetley facilities to appeal to community groups? Allow community /school group to make an exhibition, or to do performance? Who’s going to review this and move it on quickly? What are we learning from this? How does it manifest itself? What do people respond to? Funding/cash: Alumni from Leeds? Could we have campaign to ask how alumni would like to give back to Leeds? You can programme spaces with schools, artists etc but what impact is that having on how Leeds it being governed? Who is really interpreting this? How many people really have ‘ownership’ of Tetley who live nearby? Tetley is not where everything good is going to happen – need perspective Danger that it becomes an urban design/arts architecture space that only appeals to that community City deprivation lab Could we have some sort of flatscreen over bar downstairs to display stuff happening in city lab space upstairs Could all meetings in city workshop be advertised? And has to be held in PLAIN ENGLISH – space needs to be a driver of change