Placemaking

Placemaking is a term I have been researching because I somehow ended up using it in my Learning Agreement (proposal) without really understanding what it meant. Placemaking helps to describe what I want to do with the public engagement aspect of my practice (in Hirst Wood) and the research has helped me to understand how I might do this.

Here are a few points I have found useful:

• Placemaking is a term mainly used within the context of architecture, planning and environmental planning. 
• It is roughly used to describe strategies to create good spaces that people feel a connection to. This is usually referring to urban areas or public spaces.
• It is sometimes used as a trendy word to make a project appear to be community minded when it is not.
• Placemaking should involve the following:

reveal and respond to the true character of the place

re-examination of everyday settings and experiences in our lives

community driven and inclusive

dialogue and open discussion

flexibility, adaptable

multi-disciplinary

promote health, happiness and wellbeing

engage with people's practical needs...

... and emotional needs

create possibilities for encounters

evoke curiosity

inspiring and transformative

consideration for the long term development of place

creating pleasure through sensory experience

"Place making is not design, if anything it is about relationships. Relationships between people, and between people and their environment." Place Partners

"Placemaking is a dynamic human function: it is an act of liberation, of staking claim, and of beautification; it is true human empowerment" Project For Public Spaces

Some food for thought in terms of how I progress with this aspect of my work.