What is public engagement?
Lots of projects call for public engagement. This can mean anything from putting up an exhibition of already completed designs to a more impactful involvement of people in the design of the buildings and spaces that make up the places they live.
For the the bandstand we have just completed in the London Borough of Merton (see previous post), we worked directly with the community on the design. Whilst certain decisions had been formulated – the principle of construction, some materials – the design needed ideas for pattern, decoration and ornament. This might seem at first less than substantial, but was actually fundamental to an idea of embedding the bandstand in its site and developing a contemporary language of civic ornament.
Sarah Dimech leads on CHA’s engagement activities and here she developed a print-making workshop using simple, easy to use materials. One Saturday in April, we set up a stall at the monthly market. In amongst food stalls, fruit and veg, jewellery, craft and many other things we invited people to develop ideas for pattern, decoration and symbolism. Printing onto pre-cut sheets of thick card, many ideas emerged but a predominant theme was flowers. The site – Mitcham Fair Green – had previously been home to a series of elaborate flower gardens. Going back further, in the 18th and 19th centuries the area had been synonymous with the growing of medicinal plants such as liquorice, peppermint and lavender.
Engagement then is not one thing but many things.
So, a fundamental theme emerged around the idea of flower and plant motifs. We brought a blank, uncoloured model with us because it was important to be able to imagine the bandstand without preconceptions and because it allowed us to combine different designs together on the day. Later, back in the studio we arranged the results, photographing them in different ways and drawing out themes and connections.
This is one part of the community engagement. The other is how the resulting building is used. On the opening day the bandstand became the host for a wildly varying set of performances: a children’s storytelling workshop, an ‘urban opera’, a steel band and a dj set amongst them. Over the following weeks more and more events have taken place in a community programme put on by the London Borough of Merton.
It is a small piece of infrastructure and a relatively inexpensive one. But it punches above its weight in terms of impact, and it has emerged from an inclusive and open design process supported by the client and made more meaningful and enjoyable as a result. Engagement is often about spotting an opportunity and defining a framework in which design can become a much more public activity, one in which the messiness of many hands is a positive thing that helps make things better. Engagement then is not one thing but many things.