Leeds city lab planning meeting 01 notes transcript

Leeds City Lab Planning Meeting 01 – Tuesday 29th September 2015, 9.30-12.00 MEETING TRANSCRIPT

Attending:

Apologies:

Irena Bauman (Bauman Lyons Architects & Leeds Love it Share It (LLISI) CIC) Paul Chatterton (PI of Leeds City Lab pilot project (finished), University of Leeds School of Geography, LLISI) Susan Coan (Leeds Beckett University) Jo Cutter (UoL Business School) Nick Garrett ((Leeds City Council) Andy Goldring (UK Permaculture Association & LLISI) Nathalie Hadwin (Leeds City Council) Stephen Hall (UoL) Katie Hill (Leeds Beckett University, LLISI) Steve Hoey (Canopy Housing) Jonathan Lindh (LEDA) Elaine McNichol (CPD4 Health Innovation, UoL) Yun Wing Ng (RA of Leeds City Lab pilot project (finished), Bauman Lyons Architects) Richard Norton (Voluntary Action Leeds) Paul Routledge (UoL) Alexa Ruppertsberg (UoL) Rachael Unsworth (Freelance Geographer, LLISI)

Brian Ablett (Leeds City Council) Sue Ball (Media and Arts Partnership (MAAP)) Emma Bearman (Playful Leeds) Paul Connell (ODI Leeds, SmartKlub Actuated Futures) Gill Crawshaw (Volition) Mike Davies (Freelance Business Analyst) Gary Dymski (University of Leeds, Co- PI of Leeds City Lab Pilot Project) Matt Edgar (Changeful: Service Design and Innovation, Actuated Futures) Cath Follin (Leeds City Council) Sara Gonzalez (UoL) Jason Hird (The Institute for Crazy Dancing, Tea & Tolerance) Debra Kerr (Leeds City Council) Tom Knowland (Leeds City Council) Faye McAnulla (University of Leeds) Alice Owen (University of Leeds) Paul Simkins (Arup) Erik Thomasson (University of Leeds) Alicia Ridout (mHealth Habitat) Janet Spencer (Leeds Housing Concern) Anna Vickers (Arup) Louise Walker (UoL)

SESSION 1: FEEDBACK ON PILOT PROJECT HEADLINE FINDINGS EM: Health is currently missing from the discussions – public involvement, co-production and health is a major strategy driver PC: We should foreground this - healthy cities agenda subtext for many collaborators. Currently Wellcome Trust call on how urbanisation affects health.

AR: We should have something in place that allows us to say this is where we are now and this is where we’re going to make a difference. Publishing this in an academic journal is fine but in this context how can we disseminate that to other cities, because ultimately we would like to create something that demonstrates to other cities how successful partnerships work and what differences it can make.

PC: What we’re trying to get over is this divide between academic and non-academic, but also using you, I and us – it’s a WE now and a shared agenda. So if we need to articulate how we can contribute to our city positively and provide something that we can replicate then that’s a task at hand. We didn’t want to define it too much in the first 6 months because it felt too much like coming up with an answer, but point well taken.

NG: Children and families need to be included – can it be more multigenerational?

PC: We had lots of conversations about child friendly city and what would this mean in reality. And also the ageing stuff- Leeds to be one of the best cities to grow old in as one of LCC’s breakthrough projects – what does this mean for urban design, health and wellbeing? There’s a real generational issue here.

SH: I like the idea of infiltration because it’s something you can definitely do now and can be achieved quickly. For the 6 months I’ve heard about Leeds City Lab I’ve thought wouldn’t it be awesome to have a nice space? This idea of co-working spaces, something that is a physical space – long term project, but would be interesting to get ball rolling on how much it cost, where would it be, how much revenue would you need to secure it and continue into future. Everywhere I’ve been that’s been doing cool stuff with democratizing energy has got a physical space. It’s

like a shopfront, but it works because it’s on the main street. It would catalyse me to do more – come down from university and work in a space that’s less hushed.

PR: We’ve held our meetings in all sorts of different spaces (ODI, Tetley, Shine Harehills). We had some quite extensive discussions at these workshops about this very idea because it raises a series of issues – not least the where of the space, accessibility and somewhere in the city centre or emerge from the city centre because that’s where – it’s ongoing and raises all sorts of issues, cost, maintenance, accessibility etc.

EM: Accessibility for us or accessibility for the population – because that might not be the city centre. Could it be a pop-up shop? PR: Meetings have kept moving location for this reason. VAL is very inaccessible for me but much more accessible for people who live south of the river.

NH: It’s nice to come along and see some possible next step projects up there that we can definitely link to. I like the idea of the listening project in terms of our development and where we’re going to put our services into the community, it’d be nice to link into this to hearing about what communities are saying about what they need and be open into getting that feedback from and engagement with them. In terms of our assets matching up with Leeds Urban Commons – it’s nice to see that there’s some tangible things that we can take steps into.

IB: The idea is to create a network of possible projects – it’s very important for individuals to pursue the things that they are most interested in. We’re never going to find one thing that everybody’s interested in – but do it in such a way that all the projects feed into and enrich each other.

One of the powerful things that came out of the last meeting that’s worth re-stating here is that we did suggest that there is a small amount of money in LISI, a small CIC which exists in order to make sustainable projects within the city. The directors suggested that as a way of bridging the gap between now and when we get other funding in place to allow this project to continue.

PC: YWN’s time after this meeting ends - How do we need to frame this to keep us coming back, engaged and active to stop people drifting off?

S.Hoey: I’m interested in how this might connect to other things happening in the city. I’ve been involved in Leaders for Leeds which is a network which has some similar objectives behind it e.g. connecting people, making a positive difference in the city. But it’s a bit amorphous and ephemeral and it definitely doesn’t have a physical space or membership you can point to. But it could be something interesting to explore.

Also Leeds Citizens – in terms of citizen voice and what people in this city want – they’re relatively new, been trying to get going for 3-4 years, and they’ve now got a paid worker and they managed to get 600 people at Elland Road before summer and asking key influencers to commit. They’ve got listening campaigns happening and are starting to do actions in the city – it’d be good to link into this.

The other thing is Poverty Truth Challenge, which is another small project that linked up influencers and people of power in the city with people who suffered consequences of poverty. Sounded like that went really well and they’ve finished now and had their closing event so they’re planning another one for next year.

AG: There’s two parallel tracks – 1. Two people go away and do some major fundraising and bring resources into a long term project. 2. Agile development web approach: thinking about what is your minimum viable product and what is the smallest practical thing we can get our teeth stuck into, do well together now, that will set us up to do the next thing well together and build momentum.

RN: This gathering and these thoughts are one of many that are going on in the city – e.g. Steve Hoey’s examples, thinking in the same territory but not in the same ways. Leeds City Lab can’t be the only place way to discuss these deep issues. The key thing for me is how the City Lab fits into that and what it’s unique proposition? This physical space idea certainly has traction but it also has its downsides like having to raise money...What could this ‘thing’/agile development fit into the city with lots of groups wanting to make it better?

I think Wellbeing is another word that could be used with health.

There’s lot of interesting things in YEP about energy in the city and young people operating outside the structures we’re more familiar with and setting up interesting things like e.g. Duke Studios. This seems to me to be going on separately from LCC and voluntary sector activities but it would be good to link into this energy.

JL: Is this a research organisation or is it an organisation that’s trying to make things happen in the city?

Recognising that there’s lot of good things going on in the city but making them happen more often and better.

PC: One way of responding to that is that it’s one of those tricky binaries that we might need to undo e.g. research/not-research, academic/not academic. If we had a space and we’re trying to figure out persistent problems that someone put on the table, like how do we improve health and wellbeing in the city – there’s going be some element of research ie figuring out what’s going on and our response to it – people call that research process. Let’s call it something else – if the word ‘research’ gravitates people’s thinking back to the university then we’ll think of something else – the point is definitely focus on that innovation, delivery, actively doing stuff.

PR: Just to add a footnote, there’s quite a few academics whose research is directly linked to active doing in the world in a whole range of different ways.

KH: Something else I’m working on Leeds – history of Leeds music scene. We put on an exhibition in 2011 in Town Hall and we want to do it again, but we’ve now gathered a group of people: Leeds College of Music want to th do something to mark their 50 anniversary this year, East Leeds FM want to do an HLF project with young people about history of music in Leeds, there’s a community curator in Leeds city museum who wants to do something around music. We met earlier this year and decided on an umbrella brand that we’re using to connect a set of independent projects but with a common aim – I wonder if that’s a possible model that relates to the kind of ways of working that are talking about at the moment. We’ve all had projects that we wanted to do and we saw the value of connecting those up and broadening the range of people who can engage with it in lots of different ways, and everybody’s projects are enriched by being part of this broader city wide initiative. It’s everybody from LCC and the music college to a DIY group of friends who’s doing something grassroots and voluntary, and everything inbetween.

IB: There is this notion of wicked problems that keep occurring in every city that aren’t getting resolved.

Anthropologist Rebecca Moore said recently that the time of developing with certainty of outcomes is completely gone, we are now working constantly with only partial knowledge and collaboration and experimentation is the only way forward. If you forget the word co-production it doesn’t make sense, it just seems like many other forums. The idea is to pool together knowledge and resources, if we think about what the people sitting in this room are connected to then how powerful this network is.

PC: Building on that, where the buy-in comes from is that people who come to the table are willing to accept/own the sentence of ‘we can’t figure this out alone’ –every sector comes to that table with that in mind.

AG: Space and data management – one of things I find frustrating is coming to meetings again and again and still ‘does anyone know about this and that’ – it just needs to be mapped. There’s a finite amount of information, it’s not changing every day, we should be able to identify for example, who’s doing housing – we should have our model of the city, but the city is too hard for any one person to understand. And different previously guarded kingdoms have their own data, but what is happening now is those gatekeepers are saying we’re willing to share that information. If we catch up with that and create a map that we can share, then our partial knowledge increases and we’ve got better chance of focusing on these problems. So it’s not just about a discussion, it’s about really practical mapping exercises building the intelligence of the city, which means that anybody, for example some guy coming into Hunslet job centre has as good as information as I or any academic can have and can find out what the resources, opportunities, offers or request are.

NH: That’s exactly the kind of conversations we’re having - to map out the assets, the who’s doing what and where in the city and for us we know what we’re doing, but you don’t know what you don’t know. To get other people to map out what they’re doing we could have some very practical and tangible maps and then as a city you can identify the gaps and know if there are real gaps – you don’t make assumptions about what’s going on.

JL: Information doesn’t do anything in itself. It only does something when someone interacts with it AG: that’s the coproduction bit – facilitators that help you negotiate what’s there. PC: We’re very fortunate - if Paul Connell was here he’d be a big advocate for the ODI and Leeds Data City. We’re committed to this as a city, the expertise and the leading lights in the country are here in the city to help us do this. Paul Connell is really committed to this because he sees his space on the top of Munro House as a prototype of what we’re doing under a different banner essentially.

SHall: Could Leeds City Lab have a table at ODI Leeds? PC: That’s one possibility in terms of infiltration that we can be hosted by ODI for a bit.

Break Session 2: What are the easy ‘minimum viable projects’ we should work on next?

SH: I think the easiest thing to do is to offer a bit of workspace sharing (infiltration). The desk next to me is sometimes used, sometimes not used and I’m sure we can make a way that anyone can come up and plug in, you’ve got WiFi you’ve got everything you need and then during that day we can have a little bit of engagement with a few other people and you can reflect on what it is we got out of that, if anything, and it wouldn’t cost anything.

PR: some kind of collaborative co-produced mapping that can be realised differently depending on people’s interests in this room, in broader community or the broader coproduction network. That would be something relatively modest but do-able and includes everyone’s interests. For example, Irena and I were talking about our ongoing interest around mapping Leeds urban commons which could fit in nicely with what Natalie was talking about - a listening project - they could link up beautifully - not only WHAT exists but also what communities know that we don’t necessarily know.

PC: Why would we do a mapping project? What’s the need and rationale right now?

RN: I think we’ve illustrated through these discussions a benefit, if not a need. Steve gave some examples of other groups that are trying to get together to solve the same wicked issues, or a subset of some of them. Virtually all kind of meetings I go to are looking at some aspect of these issues and yet quite often people don’t know what other people are doing. I read about the energy stuff (Steve Hall’s democratizing energy work) in the Yorkshire Evening Post. I think a lot of this information does change very quickly - some of it is quite building block-ish like the Council and the three universities but the other stuff is very fluid. We and VAL tried to map, not geographically on a map, but understand what’s going on in our sector and it’s incredibly difficult and it requires resource. That resource is somebody who literally does it or everybody has to be willing to contribute themselves, if we can find some way of creating a platform that people could populate themselves that might be one way of trying to tackle it.

AG: You could do something really simply in a couple of days - listing data sets, websites, what is there, is a really good step and from that you can say what doesn’t this do that we need it to do. You could actually do a lot by bringing together the existing data sets that we’ve got. So it doesn’t need to set up a multimillion pound project to map Leeds.

IB: To answer your question Paul about why mapping - probably the most profound moment of understanding I ever had in Leeds is when I saw LCC’s map about 5 years ago showing what LCC owns and it was such a myth buster because the red colour on the map is what LCC owns, about 45% of the land, and all the most deprived neighbourhoods are in ownership of LCC. It helps to bust some myths that local authorities are disempowered as landowners and it actually shows where intervention can really happen still in terms of collaboration with public sector, it’s a very powerful tool.

PC: A mapping task raises some issues about what we would map, what factors and what scale NG: This is something the ODI could do, it’s an ideal task for them. It’s down to people like myself and other people in the Council to release the data. It’s probably better that it’s is done through ODI type activity rather than going through the Council and saying can you give us this because they’ll run around for years trying to get that done. the point we’re trying to do is not to spend money on IT systems and information management because there’s the

ODI. What we need to do is open up these information assets so ODI can use it to create the type of tools you need to progress.

PC: ODI have this format hack jams - 48 hours, they’re set a task at the beginning, we need to do this basic mapping and then anyone who’s got information to feed in joins that 48 hours process and at the end you have a product out of it, and do that really successfully in 48hours.

NG: It blows Microsoft and IBM out of the water, they’re saying we can build this system for you to do this, but we can say we don’t need to buy anything from you.

PC: When we say mapping, people might get different assumptions in their heads. Are we talking about mapping everything from land ownership, to environmental groups to who’s interested in… there’s lots of things you can map right? Where would you bound it?

IB: Urban commons was the idea? What is still in public ownership?

PR: Public ownership can mean slightly different things, a timebank for example could be a potential commons, even though it has no relationship to the Council.

IB: But it’s a starting point, an understanding of what’s there physically that belongs to citizens.

JL: My example is Cross Green where we’re based and there’s a community that’s only just beginning to rediscover its ability to change itself for the better. So my idea was always like it would great if we could have tools which we could use to reflect back what is actually happening, very often people lose sight of what’s happened. It’s great when things are happening because there’s momentum and energy, there’s lots of great food projects, back to front etc. There the beginning of things that might happen there - what I’m interested in is how we can map that sort of stuff because there’s already a link between Cross Green and Richmond Hill Community Unity, they’re already working together. So this idea of community projects around the city happening that know each other, but are able to be known wider because there’s something you can tap on and find out that’s happening in Cross Green, that’s happening over here as well.

AG: What else shall we work on other than mapping? What else jumps out as a minimum viable project?

SHoey: Nailing down what the vision is - what is the vision of this thing that’ll help people like me who are new to it. it can be broad and quite inclusive. I think I heard in conversation, around wicked problems. Maybe one sentence?

KH: Can we put it in a Google Document - what we’ve got on the website and share it and edit it?

AG: If within that we can articulate what is the unique proposition we can bring and recognise the value of the existing players in Leeds as well, it doesn’t just say what we’re about but it says how we would like to connect and work collaboratively with other networks and organisations in the city, I think that sends out the right signal.

PC: Have another look at the words on the video on the website - we can shape this.

IB: I very much like the idea of the listening project - I think that can goes hand in hand with the urban mapping.

The mapping would be a starting point, an invitation for listening really, for smaller groups to take ownership of smaller areas and increase the information.

SH: Has anyone heard of the listening project on radio 4? That’s nice right, and engaging. I worry sometimes that when you’re sitting with a reasonable number of public sector people it’s listening then to do something with - which is obviously useful in a consultation sense - but if the outcome of the mapping thing is mapping the urban commons - wouldn’t it be nice to just to have a listening project e.g. Why does it matter to you? how do you value it? Because you could see how a green infrastructure strategy can develop to let’s bring businesses in. Why not just map what we’ve got now and say why does this piece of common land matter to you? did you meet your first girlfriend there?

What is the value?

JL: Having a recording of people’s voices and opinions is very accessible. You can get it on radio and website.

PC: What’s the sequencing of that? What comes first, listening or mapping?

IB: I think they should be slightly staggered, so we start with some information that acts as a catalyst for smaller groups to form around geographical areas that mean something to them.

AR: it’s easy to establish a vision for what we want but if this should have any credence with the communities you’re trying to do this for then I think the listening project should come first.

SHall: If it works it might form a format for how you do things, you do a bit of mapping trying to understand where the situation is now, then you go and listen to people.

AG: As a community resident, I would say the listening project is all very well but it’s a mechanism to follow things through on. As an example, the Planning for Real type of activity that happened in Chapeltown was brilliant but then the Council took away all the information and we didn’t have access to it. To me what we bring that might be different would be a mechanism by which we listen but then people can act upon their own thinking to make a difference. Maybe we need to map the existing initiatives in the city that we can add value to rather than starting from scratch, because I wouldn’t want to go into a community, listen to them then just go away again.

AR: I think with listening to influence your vision you will probably get an awful lot of different wants and identified needs - it’s good that you have diversity that should not stop you to focus on only part of it, that then becomes the vision of Leeds City lab - with all the will in the world - we will not be able to solve all the problems. So I think it’s basically trying to figure out what is important, it will give us the priorities.

AG: I think one of the key next steps is to write a brief for each of these because I’ve got a feeling that with the Listening Project we’ve each probably got 15 different conceptions of what that might be. We need to have a meaningful discussion about a brief.

IB: I’m very interested in how we might build on existing needs, and you said you had a very definite need, to look at libraries and some of the commons, so why don’t we just plug into one of your needs and make this a starting point?

NH: If we wanted to do some do some small steps we could pick a particular part of the city around a particular agenda and work on that then take it city wide.

RU: Is there any potential to deploy students on work placements to help with this to help with their module requirements?

NH: I’ve got two suggestions: 1. we all subscribe to the Yorkshire Evening Post! They like writing about projects so we should tell them about our projects. It’s got a readership and reach that we don't have. 2. Infiltration - that we can share a workspace and that you can at some point in that time have a chat with the people you’re sharing the workspace with, get a coffee, lunch or drink after work and share some of the insights, blog about it or Tweet and anything that comes up can contribute to the mapping.

RN: ‘Listening project’ makes me feel slightly uneasy because it sounds like WE are going to be listening to THEM and it should be like a speaking project so local people can speak and then listen to each other but there’s something about the term. KH: What about ‘chatting’ project?

PC: If we’re going to do some work as partnership it needs buy in from higher up at LCC, if we’re going to do mapping everyone’s got to own that map and let us do it and let it be a neutral entity without everyone wanting to put their own stamp on it. And the listening speaking project - we don’t want to raise expectations and have different values to LCC. WE need to set our values together, have LCC be comfortable with that and go forward on that basis. The key thing is we don’t just want to gather views, we want to work with people in those neighbourhoods to make stuff happen so when we hear stuff it’s going to be implementation based.

NG: There’s only about three people in the Council that you need buy in from. Lee Hemsworth and a couple of people further down the tree. You do not want to engage with the entire Council, there’s multiple priorities in that, it’s three people. The second you need for mapping is data. We’ve got about 8 different data bases at the Council

none of which talk to each other, we’ve no desire to join those databases up because it’s just not a priority for us. If we can release data from those databases to do a hack to map community assets etc then it’s probably worth the clanging. The third is don’t underestimate community assets over a listening project - I’ve been a town councillor and I’ve had people protesting outside my house about when the police tried to close the police station. The building should have gone 20 years ago but people love community assets and they don’t know how many there are. When you map that down and then do a listening project on the back of that then you start to get traction because people start to think creatively.

PC: If we get into conversation about what people want to do in their neighbourhood it might raise complex issues that can only be addressed by much higher up. Infrastructure, highways health..

NG: I think Leeds works better when you start something disruptively, come up with something and place it. If you try and engage too much at the start you won’t get stuff going. It’s much better if you go under the radar and turn up and go ‘look at this’ and the Council will probably move.

NH: For us to do any of our work we’ve to cut across the red tape, we’ve not waited for some of the policy stuff because if we had we would never had moved the police into our police stations had we been waiting for the policy to be written to allow that to happen. We were part of the team that cleared those rooms for the police to move in while the other stuff was happening in the background.

NG: We reduced our city centre buildings from 17 to probably about 4 in the last 8 years - now we’re going down to even less and that’s just offices. We’re about to start a business planning exercise looking at all our assets in our localities, we’re just talking about it at the moment but you’re far better getting the stuff done now before that kicks off.

IB: Would have any information about places of worship as well on your database? Because they are the greatest asset.

NG: We probably understand better what we’re paying for.

PC: rather than this is what we want from Leeds.

Do we just want to touch on the practicalities of the LISI offer? We’ve got a few thousand in the bank but what are we actually offering?

IB: Continuity of Yun Wing and moving us forward. It’s a neutral broker because Yun Wing’s not part of the university. Could we use ODI as a base?

PC: University is a member and so is LCC. We could say two partners of the Leeds City Lab idea are members of ODI. AG: So we can do a little programme of meetings for these projects.

PC: The residual idea of scoping out other spaces beyond the ODI - is that too much of an early stage? If people have got in their minds wouldn’t it be great to have a unique space which is a Leeds City Lab space beyond the ODI - is it too early for that?

NH: What do we need from the space? That determines if we need a permanent space. If it’s just a space to meet and if everything else can be stored online or in a box.

PR: One of the beauties of the way this process has worked up to now is that the space has moved. That may not be practical in two years time but up to now it’s been inclusive because we’ve in the private sector, in public sector and third sector - it’s very much co-produced space and it’s moved around and it’s not always easily accessible for everybody but it works out.

NH: It highlights those resources as well. There’s old broadcasting house enterprise space -‘Business Lounge’ which is very under-utilised.

JL: I wonder if there’s places like that which are open and you can say between 9-12 on certain days two tables will be used in whatever coffee shop, that happens to be open access and has good wifi, that’s all we need. If it becomes a regular thing and is easy to get to, we don’t need to spend any money on space. Or something nomadic that you can put up that’s recognisable as Leeds City Lab. AG: The word laboratory for me suggests equipment - there’s a workbench, there’s Bunsen burners. So what does our laboratory include? We could be pop-up, it would make sense initially for something to move around - we’ve essentially got it here, a projector. What is the minimum kit we need to take around?

PR: The laboratory is also all the people working in it, so WE are the key kit it seems at this stage.

PC: Is there a feeling that rather than moving around we book a place at ODI for consistency?

IB: I think we need to have identity or else the group won’t hold together.

NH: Is the mapping we do have to be digital?

PC: The listening and talking needs to be hosted in a place round all sorts of stuff if we’re going to be facilitators of this data and mapping.

RN: People Connected together for Peace did a really interesting thing with a map about deprivation in the city.

The biggest physical map I’m aware of is in Leeds city Museum. Maybe we should have a Leeds City Lab event there in the future once we’ve got something to work on? Last time we met you talked about LISI opening up to a wider membership?

PC: Anyone can become a member of Leeds Love it Share It. However, all members so far have been directors. At the next meeting we can figure out how people can join and bring the paperwork and decide who wants to be on the board of the directors - it can be very light touch!

JL: Is LISI and Leeds City lab the same thing?

AG: It’s just a vehicle for now that’s just good enough to get us to the next step.

IB: It’ll be nice to expand membership because I’m just very aware that once we start doing projects some people might not be involved and I just think that it’s so amazing to have so many different people around the table and we need to hold on to that.

RU: How many people are on the list who signed up for the workshops? YWN: Over 60.

AR: Your suggestion around Leaders for Leeds is about people, who is in charge of that project, who’s thinking about that problem, this is where you get your broader membership?

PC: When and where is the next meeting? and what?

IB: It should be at ODI and we should have a proposal sketched out for the ideas we’ve discussed and get on with it.

PC: So we’ve got the mapping one, the chatting one and the Vision/ethos one and subscribing new members.

AG: We need to identify a funding team realistically and work out a business model is and how we’re going to bring more resources in, £7000 isn’t going to take us far. Leeds Energy company, if we could create that as a Leeds owned company which had dividends that came back to develop more wellbeing projects in the city then you’ve got an ongoing funding mechanism so I think we should be creative about our long term financing.

PC: I’d love to leave my day job and there be a place or next series of spaces in the city which is the place where we do our stuff, that’s doing something different. We’re going down there every day and we’re finding out about challenges and problems and helping people find solutions and creating new stuff for the city. AG: it needs to well resourced so I think we need a team who look at that.

PC: On that, there’s the economy and culture board, that is chaired by Nigel Foster and others, who invited us back and who pitched it to them back in December. They said come and tell us where you’re at, and that’s a multistakeholder group in the city, so they’re getting us on the agenda for their next meeting. I think several of us can go down, it’ll be quite fun to say here’s 10 people who are going to tell you something. I bumped in Nigel Foster and he said we could pitch this idea to private sector partners, who have an old shop in the city centre, who knows?

Once you put it out here as an idea, a creatively cost free experimental place?

So the next meeting will be at ODI Leeds (top floor Munro House) and we’ll canvas for a date. And we’ll propose an agenda round nailing down these blobs of activity. We’ll get a date on Paul Connell’s availability and just set a date? (otherwise it’s death by doodle!) Yun Wing - can you see if there’s a way to create a Google Doc link off the website where we can all see and work on the Agenda?

AG: On a practical note a good thing that Yun Wing can do and we can all help with is that when new people come on a regular basis is that it can be quite frustrating if the first half of every meeting is spent bringing people up to date. So, what projects have done very successfully is to create other mechanisms for people can be brought up to speed very quickly and that can be physical posters that go on the wall that say these are our values/vision/principles, this is a timeline of what we’ve done - that’s available on the website - that’s new people’s responsibility to read that before they come. For this to grow and be successful people need to be inducted easily and not have to do that every time.

PC: Maybe if you’re a newbie you come 15 minutes earlier to sit down with one of us and we give you a quick update.

AG: There’s something on the wall and that’s part of the lab rules.

PC: Paul Simkins from Arup isn’t here today but wants to stay involved. IB: he and Arup also have a space at ODI. RU: What is the state of play on timing for the H2020 call? We need to keep our eye on that.

PC: It’s next year but the thing is there was this H2020 call on urban re-wilding - nature based approaches to urban design and there was an idea we could look at it through South Bank that linked in with Leeds Sustainable Development Group. Basically someone should call a meeting down at the City Workshop in the Tetley and then if people are interested they make it happen. IB: Mapping would be very useful for that. RU: We’re about to take Judith Blake on a tour of the south bank next week.

PC: If this is for you and you want to come back next time we should also commit to bringing other people along taking ownership of this.

IB: I wonder Paul if we should invest in a little badge - there’s always some need for something tactile! In Berlin they had a three week festival called Making City which is all about urban commons and they had a huge yellow badge saying Making City and so many people were wearing them around the city! Just saying Leeds City Lab and nothing more than that!

PC: If Yun Wing’s going to be supporting us on this then tell us what day you’re going to be spending thinking/working on this ? YWN: Fridays PC: Does it feel comfortable that people can email Yun Wing with follow ups on stuff but you’ll park all of that for Fridays to respond then?

IB: Another thing, is that we should buy leedscitylab.com address? PC: We got as far as leedscitylab.wordpress last time.

SHall: We definitely need more web presence, when you Google Leeds City Lab you get lots of things that aren’t the wordpress.

IB: Do we have a social media person here?

PC: Yes - Steve Hoey!

SHoey: I can do, but I don’t want to take ownership of that.

PC: but we can look into Leeds City lab.com. We’ve got everyone’s emails so we’ll circulate the next date at ODI and please feel free to contact us at leedscitylab@gmail.com.

RN&IB: All welcome to ‘infiltrate’ at VAL and Bauman Lyons Architects.

SHall: Perhaps we can just email around and make that happen.

PC: It sounds like we need Council people next time, we need NH and NG and other people you want to bring.

Close

ACTIONS: - Set meeting date at ODI Leeds in October with Paul Connell, circulate date to group - Write mini briefs for mapping and chatting projects (maybe as a group at next meeting?)

- Share Google doc on website of website text for people to start shaping ethos/vision - Share Google doc on website for next meeting’s Agenda - Buy leedscitylab.org domain and update web address – sort out Google searchability.

- Steve Hall to email around about infiltrating workspaces - Existing LLISI directors to meet in meantime and prepare membership/directorship paperwork for next meeting - Stay in touch at leedscitylab@gmail.com for anything in the meantime (Friday’s for responding to any emails)