Public Collaboration Lab

T-Factor: London

Prototyping participatory urban futures through culture, creative collaboration and community engagement. Unleashing vibrant urban hubs of inclusive (re)generation, social innovation and enterprise.

T-Factor was a Horizon 2020 research project challenging the ‘waiting time’ in urban regeneration - the time between the development of the masterplan and the infrastructure being built - to demonstrate how a participatory approache to meanwhile use could produce vibrant, inclusive hubs of urban (re)generation, social innovation and enterprise.

The project targeted early stage regenerations in historic cities including London, Bilbao, Amsterdam, Kaunas, Milan and Lisbon, with 25 partners from 11 European countries and China; spanning government, universities, businesses and community organisations.

UAL led the London pilot, contributing academic expertise in participatory arts and design, creative public engagement and place-making to the long-term redevelopment project taking place in Euston.

Using temporary interventions to design permanence

Our design research explored the impact of collaboration and creativity within the 'meanwhile' - temporarily vacant areas awaiting regeneration.

We worked with local communities to co-create meaningful temporary interventions that could inform permanent provision.

Throughout the process, culture and creativity facilitated engagement and collaboration with diverse people: infusing the meanwhile with heritage and culture-based innovation in response to community priorities.

Impact

T-Factor shaped an international movement leveraging heritage, culture and creativity to build capacity and knowledge co-creation for ‘participatory meanwhile’ in urban regeneration.

Highlights of the London pilot include:

A Creative Consultation and Planning Toolkit, supporting resident-led co-visioning in the Euston meanwhile. The toolkit synthesised 5-years of prior consultations to combat ‘consultation fatigue’, supporting prioritisation of prior responses rather than repeating the questioning of the same groups of people.
Around 30 community workshops/projects, engaging 1,000+ residents. Outcomes include a public story trail connecting green spaces and a 3D digital archive constructed by diverse communities to preserve cultural heritage.
Exchange and piloting of models across European cultural sites e.g. Old Diorama Arts Centre in Euston and La Friche de la Belle de Mai in Marseille, France.
T-Factor toolbox - providing inspiration, tools and resources for temporary uses that drive inclusive, sustainable and thriving urban regeneration.

Photo courtesy of A Space for Us

Arts, Culture and Heritage

Bringing lost art to life: CSM's Art programme worked with 'A Space for Us' - The People’s Museum Somers Town, to reinstate lost local artworks as 3D digital artefacts that could be viewed in their original context, on the streets of Somers Town using Augmented Reality.
Photo: UAL.

Collaborative and circular economy and enterprise

Amplifying existing initiatives focused on reuse, recycling and upcycling, we worked with Our Little Markets (OLM) Community Interest Company to establish a Circular Enterprise Hub to reinvigorate Chalton Street Market, supporting resident makers to trade sustainably with support around pricing, branding and marketing.
Wonderscope by Alisa Ruzavina, Regent's Park Estate Story Trail. Photo: Alice Horsley

Safe and convivial spaces and streets

Regent’s Park Estate Story Trail was a resident-led public art trail inspiring creative public realm improvements to the neighbourhood of Regent’s Park Estate in Camden. Eleven public art commissions were selected by residents to be developed and installed across the estate and wider ward. Each artwork is site specific, sharing the (hi)stories of local people and places.
T-Factor Consortium image

Meanwhile Use Working Group

T-Factor: London was connected with the Euston development partners via a Meanwhile Use Working Group. Relationships with developers, delivery organisations and decisionmakers were underpinned by an existing strategic partnership with London Borough of Camden, the unitary planning authority for Euston's development.

Girl digging sand with a workshop outside — **T-Factor, photographed by Adam Razvi.**

Project team

UAL Principal Investigator: Adam Thorpe, a.thorpe@csm.arts.ac.uk
UAL Co Investigator: Mick Finch, m.finch@csm.arts.ac.uk
Rhianon Morgan Hatch, Research Fellow
Eli Hatleskog, Research Fellow
Diana Ibanez Lopez, Course Leader MA Cities
Marcus Willcocks, Research Fellow
Adriana Cobo Corey, Senior Lecturer in Ethical Practice

Duration

1 June 2020 - 31 May 2024

Funder

Horizon 2020 SC5-20-2019: Transforming historic urban areas and/or cultural landscapes into hubs of entrepreneurship and social and cultural integration

T-Factor aims

To work internationally as a community of practice: delivering an innovative city-mentoring model that created multiple collaborations between the pilot cities; connecting and advancing cultural and creative hubs, universities, enterprises and social organisations partnering the project.
Our shared aim as partners was to create the conditions for urban regeneration to negotiate public and private interests towards sustainable development.
To apply a ‘learning by making’ process to the development of masterplans across the 6 European pilot sites, consolidating, adjusting and providing new directions of urban development rooted in shared goals of sustainable city-making; with input by people from different professional backgrounds across the world.
Supporting UAL’s wider STEAM agenda to put the ‘arts’ into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths); highlighting the value of participatory art and design practices to public and social innovation.

Approach

T-Factor applied and developed a participatory city-making methodology based on a collective, collaborative and creative action of prototyping futures in the meanwhile.

The process was supported by a ‘transformation agency’ and thematic Transformation Labs (mini think tanks), addressing the following topics:

Arts, Culture & Creativity
Industry 4.0 and STEAM Agenda
Citizens-led Smartness
Urban Design for Sociality and Well-being
Circular and Collaborative Economy
Social Innovation
Social Inclusion, Megacities and Climate Change.

Lab themes were combined with heritage, culture and creativity; focussing on how prototypes can maximise good growth, wellbeing and ecological regeneration.

Characterised by a combination of design, arts and creativity, community-building and robust monitoring and evaluation expertise, Local Coalitions were supported by the agency throughout the co-design, implementation, governance, monitoring and evaluation of the pilot projects; and the results synthesised into a Transformative Meanwhile Toolbox.