Including Culture In Development: A step-by-step guide
122
Including Culture In Development: A step-by-step guide
122eBook
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780874204407 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Urban Land Institute |
| Publication date: | 10/23/2019 |
| Sold by: | INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 122 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Part I Six Steps to Success Ten Top Tips
Six Steps to Success
These six steps set out a shared and achievable route to finding the right cultural match for a development.
Getting Step 1 right – identifying and agreeing the vision – is key to what follows. It is where mistakes most often happen, so this step is explained in more detail to help get it right.
Major developments will often have a requirement for a cultural element as part of their planning permission – and several of the case studies, including RELAY in King's Cross, and the North West Cambridge Residency Programme, refer to these 106 agreements, as well as to a desire to go beyond the usual developer approach. The key is for all stakeholders to trust that this does not have to be a competitive negotiation. Following the six steps outlined here will result in finding commonalities – where shared objectives overlap – so the cultural opportunity will emerge without anyone compromising their objectives.
Step 1
Agree a vision of success
Step 2
Establish benchmarks and measurements
Step 3
Select the cultural engagement
Step 4
Build an inventory of resources
Step 5
Create the strategic opportunity and engage a cultural professional
Step 6
Agree the cultural brief
Step 1 – Agree a vision of success
Objective:
Identifying everyone's priorities for the impacts and characteristics of the development will help create a clear vision of success.
Question:
What do you want to achieve?
Key actions:
1. Form a working group. The people who will be delivering the project should start thinking and working as a partnership as soon as possible. This group is likely to include different people at different times throughout the development timeline.
2. Map priorities. Explore and capture in bullet point form the outcomes all stakeholders need the development to achieve. This should include the relevant planning and policy context for the site in local plans and cultural strategies. Is the site in a Creative Enterprise Zone, for example? This may require existing cultural infrastructure to be retained or new cultural infrastructure to be included in the development. Be as transparent and open to each other's ideas as possible.
3. Identify the types of impacts and characteristics. An open, objective conversation can start to find natural intersections of priorities. Should the development's impacts be economic, social or environmental, including natural or man-made? Are there particular requirements around quality, identity, health and wellbeing or community building? (There are some ways to help think about this on the following pages.)
4. Explore how culture can help achieve the priorities. This will help ensure culture is not seen as 'additional' later on. Aim to explain the type and role of cultural content or activity in the development as expressively as possible. More complex districts will require a wider cultural placemaking strategy and delivery plan.
5. Capture these goals and priorities in a loose, descriptive vision (see an example on the following pages). As this is for internal consumption only at this stage, there is no need to be too restrictive. However, make it clearly specific to this site, and not too generic. Consider using a facilitator to help explore and capture priorities.
6. Record all of the suggested ambitions and outcomes identified. Even if some of these are not included in the final vision, they will add detail to the eventual artist or cultural brief and help cultural collaborators trust you share similar values in what you both hope to achieve.
7. Keep options open as far as possible and continue to refine in the following steps. There is no need to make it a tightly drawn narrative just yet: the 'cultural opportunity' may well be an action, or programme, or artwork that links the disparate elements together.
Finding shared priorities
At first, stakeholders' priorities for the impact of the development might seem too disparate. To help identify common objectives, try overlaying three broad headings of social, economic and environmental goals into the discussion to find where priorities overlap:
Social goals can include bringing a new identity to an existing area, building a sense of place in a new or abandoned area, uniting different communities or introducing new or different activity in the area.
Economic goals can include bringing economic benefits to the development, the local or wider area, and the existing or new community.
Environmental goals can include setting out environmental and sustainability targets that the development must achieve, developing a brownfield site or creating new, natural public realm.
Examples of a vision: 'The development will create an appealing shared landscape (environment) that encourages more cross-community activity (social)', or 'the development needs to raise economic value in the area through challenging negative perceptions of provision (economic).'
Types of impact
As well as broad objectives, consider the impact for the success of the development, for example in terms of:
Quality Targeted Occupiers
Some developments will Developments may want to need to ensure the scheme is attract new occupiers or associated with high quality consolidate existing activity in terms of materials, design, with a strengthened identity,
etc., and this will also impact e.g. a creative or knowledge the type of cultural campus.
engagement identified.
Activity Community Building
The frequency, times of day, Priorities for social duration and type of activity sustainability can include may be key for a knitting an existing development. community with new communities, the tenure and affordable housing mix,
provisions for all ages,
increasing cultural diversity growth and mixing of business with residential uses.
Perception Shift Health and Wellbeing
New schemes may need to Well-designed green space develop an identity before or new leisure facilities will construction begins, while contribute to mental and redevelopments and social wellbeing, which can regeneration projects may be considered alongside wish to shift perceptions. physical health – see the example on the following pages.
A focus on health and wellbeing
Cultural interventions improving physical and social environments can bring health and wellbeing benefits to individuals and the community. Public art, for example, can bring people together through a shared experience in one place, and neighbourhoods can transform with a new sense of identity and pride. These are some recent examples where cultural interventions have brought direct benefits for health and wellbeing.
The process
While developing your brief for both project and cultural intervention, consider how to support health and wellbeing in the following ways:
1. Improving daily environments
Interventions can be designed to improve environmental factors known to undermine health, such as poor air quality, lights that disrupt sleep patterns, or harsh acoustics, and support people in managing stress by strengthening our connection to nature.
A vibrant green wall at Edgware Road Underground station in London provides a calming respite at a busy traffic junction. Planting has been selected to lower particulate levels nearby, a key health concern at this specific junction, and greenery is known to improve mental health as well as reduce blood pressure and stress.
2. Inspiring healthier long-term behaviour
Providing real-time feedback to raise awareness on personal habits or local public health issues can help people adopt healthier options, and reinforce these into long-term choices.
The piano stair in Odenplan subway station Stockholm – a simple intervention that translated footfall on each step into a musical pitch – inspired 66 percent more people than usual to choose the stairs over the escalator. Trees in a park in Lille, France were given lungs that 'breathed' in and out with an animated flickering of light, the rhythm of which responded to ambient air quality. Being able to see quick shallow breaths during peak traffic hours made obvious the direct link between busy roads and degrading air quality, encouraging citizens to consider the community health impacts of their own transport choices.
3. Building social networks
Loneliness and social isolation are harmful to physical and mental health, with studies reporting a lack of social connections to be as damaging to health as 15 cigarettes a day, and increasing risk of cognitive decline, depression and dementia. Initiatives that help people form and maintain meaningful relationships are therefore valuable health and wellbeing interventions.
Crown Fountain in Chicago's Millennium Park combines water, light, and glass to create a unique meeting point and reflection space – a buzzing hub for families and visitors and a welcome cooling respite in hot weather. Alongside, two illuminated totems display the faces of 1,000 Chicagoans of all ages, genders and ethnicity, reinforcing the inclusivity and diversity of the city.
The Endless Stair, dRMM Architect's temporary installation on the Tate Modern's lawn as part of London Design Festival 2013, ignited the community's imagination and became a natural magnet for visitors.
Step 2 – Establish benchmarks and measurements
Objective:
Introducing a way to evaluate success early on will build the business case, help meet policy requirements and optimise the development's impact.
Question:
How will you measure success?
Key actions:
1. Establish existing benchmarks. Understand the situation now, and the difference between the benchmark and the vision. Documenting negative origins of the development or undervalued identity can provide rich context to inspire cultural collaborators.
2. Align measures for evaluation. To understand the shift in value, use, or design of the development, agree how to measure change. Consider some of the suggested outcomes that did not make it into the vision: they could be useful as Key Performance Indicators.
3. Indicators can help identify the nature of the cultural opportunity. The type of measurements chosen will also help the cultural collaborator understand what stakeholders expect from the cultural opportunity for the development.
4. Make measurement appropriate to communicate progress. To measure quality, track commentary by cultural influencers and references in case studies or other schemes' Request for Proposals; for activity, measure footfall, demographic profiles, social media analytics and surveys; perceptions shifts can be measured through financial return on investment, the profile of new audiences and tenants, and businesses attracted to the area; a knowledge campus can be measured by performance ratings; health and wellbeing can be tracked at an individual level by biometric data from wearables (privacy permitting) or for the community by public health metrics; community building could include frequency of use of communal spaces, number of community organisations and increasing diversity of profile.
Step 3 – Select the cultural engagement
Objective:
As well as knowing what success will look like, agree what type of engagement experience the development should create.
Question:
What is the right type of cultural experience?
Key actions:
1. Agree the type of engagement experience. How and when should people experience the cultural activation? This can range from instant excitement and surprise, through sustaining curiosity and dialogue, to long-term or even indefinite activity.
2. Decide how long it should be in place. The duration can be permanent, temporary or pop-up. This will help identify the type of creative production, infrastructure or activation.
What kind of engagement?
Step 4 – Build an inventory of resources
Objective:
Having established when and how often, understanding the financial budget and human resources available will help clarify the right cultural opportunity and attract the right match of creatives.
Question:
What resources do you have?
Key actions:
1. Understand the financial resources, time and space. While a small budget and tight time will not work for large-scale visual permanent works, it can certainly be sufficient to create temporary engagement, such as a performing arts programme. Consider what space may lie just beyond the boundaries.
2. Investigate who is available to facilitate the process and offer assistance. Who else will be needed? Consider all financial, human and in-kind resources, as well as help from partners. There may be overlap across stakeholders so several resources could be shared. A full inventory of resources will help inform the brief for the cultural opportunity.
3. Don't rule anything out yet. Creative partners will want to understand the resources available, so it is important not to narrow the proposal down too far at this stage and exclude unexpected solutions later.
4. Review why are you doing this. Consider the potential outputs according to resources that exist, although this is ideally done in person as stakeholders can often find unexpected opportunities when discussing face-to-face. Bringing this audit back together with the vision can also help strengthen conversations at the next step.
Inventory of resources
Who and how?
What human resources do you have to facilitate the process and offer as assistance? Who will you need to add? Who will be able to provide this for you?
When?
At what point in the process do you want to engage? What is the duration? How soon do you need results? How long should the intervention last?
What?
What is the space that you have to offer? Are there several spaces? Are there off spaces that you think are useless?
Where?
Where is it? And in relation to what else? What lies outside the boundaries? What is near by? Where is it in the city? The nation? Beyond?
How much?
What financial resources do you have? What is the budget?
Why?
Review Step 1.
Step 5 – Create the strategic opportunity and engage a cultural professionalObjective:
Confirming the strategic opportunity for the development will help identify the right creative professional.
Question:
Based on the strategic brief who is the right creative professional?
Key actions:
1. Draw together information from the previous four steps and translate these into a rough strategic brief. Do not edit or position the cultural opportunity too narrowly yet.
2. Recheck and refine the information gathered from Steps 1-4. This will help to focus the offer, and the type of arts, cultural or creative collaborator. If additional resources or a longer time frame have emerged it may be better to look at several opportunities.
3. Compare your strategic opportunity to the case studies here, or by collecting others. Find out who helped create them – curators, commissioning agencies and artists – and seek some advice and feedback. See what can be learned, but also what will make your development authentic and distinctive.
4. Engage the right cultural professional. A curator or commissioning agency will help interpret the opportunity into an exciting creative proposal. A larger cultural strategy or masterplan may be necessary for a larger scale development, while different commissioners or artists may be more appropriate for certain offers. Also consider working with local, existing cultural organisations, whose expertise can help deliver your priorities.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Including Culture In Development"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Urban Land Institute.
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