Place-making
Connecting those who have underused spaces and places with a host of people waiting to put them to alternative use.
You may be a community group trying to improve your area; a local authority or housing association who want to build community wealth where traditional regeneration has failed; a retail park or heritage group keen to find new uses for old buildings; or have new developments that lack content, purpose, atmosphere or ground floor uses.
What if the next big thing is a thousand small things? The scale and growth paradigm may be exhausted. Units of economic activity are shrinking to increase creativity and pace. Inward investment is reinterpreted as global relations. R&D departments are being scrapped in favour of relationships with networks of small, nimble, risk taking micro enterprises. Adventurous communities test ideas in exchange for valuable data. Ownership of the global infrastructure that gathers and distributes is contested, with a potential for mass collective ownership.
Those cities with the most vibrant creative sectors globally are found to be the most economically productive and socially inclusive and attract other entrepreneurs and investors.
Creative Economist starts with small, affordable, individual, then collective, actions. Economic activity becomes accessible, affordable and participative. Progress is cyclical, networked, honeycombed. We listen, believe in dreams, harness heritage and inherent skills, build on passions and purpose. Feasibility is tested with a cardboard prototype, a single sale, sweeping a street, holding a placard, tasting a cake or planting a lettuce. Activity Based Costing determines costs and investments are paid back in social as well as financial returns.
Creative Economist invites us to imagine a different future and gathers together the people who will make and occupy it. Across seven very different places Creative Economist have consistently delivered new economic activity, differentiated place identity and purpose that, once started, is infectious and takes on a self-sustaining life of its own.
Any industry sector, diverse community or tenure mix can reinvent itself. Together, we are the economy.
The Other City
The Other City was initiated by Islington Mill, an artist led community in Salford, Greater Manchester, who variously describe themselves as artists, designers and misfits. They first occupied a former ‘room and power’ mill 20 years ago, bought by artist Bill Campbell on bridging finance (as no one else would lend him the money) to save his studio.
Each floor of IM has been DIY redeveloped and subsequently managed by the artists who became
its tenants - a ‘little society’ in which space, equipment, expertise and leadership are generously shared.
Collective responsibility underpins a self-financing economy of workshops, studios, a club, gallery, Bed and Breakfast, live-in apartments, pop up shops, summer saunas, open air cinemas and Christmas markets.
Sounds From The Other City music festival, now in its 15th year, draws 3,000 ticketed customers to 30 community centres, churches, cafes and street corners to see 600 performers on an ordinarily quiet Sunday each May. Local business enjoy their highest annual revenue yields in a single weekend. Sounds has grown the feasibility of Salford as a cultural destination.
Across Manchester 1,000 creative studios have closed to make way for residential development profit. The Mill has 444 creative enterprises waiting for a space it would take 27 years to accommodate.
Creative Economist has worked with Islington Mill for the last 5 years to bring forward The Other City. It brings together ambition, creativity, community, land and investment across a potential 2 hectare district to create the UK’s first artist led Cultural Community Land Trust.
The Other City is scaling a viable, artist led, community from a single Mill to a whole district. It will accommodate over 600 micro enterprises, 1000 jobs and deliver £33M social impact per annum on completion
Baltic Creative
Erika Rushton has chaired Baltic Creative since its inception 10 years ago. Baltic Creative began with an art exhibition, a gathering, and a clean-up in an area of underused streets and vacant buildings. The initiators persuaded regional government
to put 18 light industrial tin sheds, with no remaining purpose, in collective
community ownership. A low cost refurbishment provided a first space for people to make, work, meet and trade.
Today 3,000 creative entrepreneurs work in an area where previously there were none. Despite concern there was no demand the first 45,000sqft was 100% full within 6 months. Latent entrepreneurs emerged from their back
bedrooms and imaginations. by 2016 Government found Baltic to be the fastest growing creative & digital cluster and Baltic featured front page in the Rough Guide Top 10 places to visit in the world.
Over the last 3 years Baltic have tripled the footprint to 120,000sqft. Each new space is still 100% occupied within 6 months. We contribute £16.6M GVA. What’s different? £7M of asset value, created by people with purpose not property developers, is owned by the community, for the community, in perpetuity. We reinvest circa £500,000 p.a. in local, irrepressible, creative exuberance.
External evaluators commented ‘the problem is no one knows who is in charge in Baltic’. We have fiercely maintained a 50% female Board from the outset and our collaborative style is considered critical to the areas collective success where 33% of tech ventures are led by women compared to a 22% sector average.
Granby 4 Streets
The residents of Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust had lived in derelict streets for over 30 years. Declared a Neighbourhood Renewal Area in the 1980’s a red line devalued homes and rendered them un-mortgage-able; the only buyer was the state. After 5 development competitions and 30 years the remaining 30 households stopped going to meetings, abandoned engagement and took action: cleared rubbish by the ton; painted tinned up voids with murals; planted flowers, fruit trees, herbs and vegetables; turned streets into shared gardens to meet and eat in; and a DIY street market brought traders and customers from across Liverpool.
The Global crash presented an opportunity when regeneration plan No 6 disintegrated. Granby 4 Streets suggested there may not be one big solution, but many small ones could add up to something big. A Social Investor from Jersey was the first to match the community investment of time, energy and creativity with a £500,000 interest free loan. Then the council joined in offering homes for £1 and 3 social landlords, a mutual home ownership coop, a few private investors, the Nationwide Trust and Power To Change joined in.
Artist and Architects collective Assemble won the The Turner Prize for their work with Granby 4 Streets.
Assemble used the worldwide profile to establish Granby Workshop where local people design and make crafts products and use modern technologies to produce and distribute them worldwide.
Almost all 300 homes are now redeveloped. The Granby 4 Streets Market has become a Liverpool institution attracting circa 2,000 people to 70 stalls each month. A Winter Garden offers a gathering space and hosts Artist In Residence or Air BnB.