Re-Imagining Portland Works

In small groups, you will develop and present a proposal for a creative industries project to be funded by the business council of (Ipsky) a fictional Queensland town. This proposal will be based on opportunities, which as you will demonstrate as part of the proposal, exist within the current creative industries environment in the town as well as within the overall regional, state, national, and international creative industries environment. The proposal may suggest creative initiatives, research projects, policy developments, or other relevant developments to be undertaken by the business council, and will include basic funding and staffing requirements as well as a timeline. In addition to the written proposal, your group will also submit an electronic copy of an A3-size poster presenting the project, which will be exhibited in Z2 level 3 during week 7. Groups will be expected to identify individual group members’ contributions to the proposal. See the Group Work Declaration from the OLT site. Length: 1500 words + presentation = equivalent to 2000 words Weighting: 40%

Environment & Planning A: Economy and Space

This paper examines the economic practices of maker spaces-open workshops that have increased in number over recent years and that aim to provide access to tools, materials and skills for small-scale manufacturing and repair. Scholarly interest in such spaces has been increasing across the social sciences more broadly, parallel to a growing interest in craft and making in economic geography. However, to rectify the 'capitalocentrism' of much existing work, the paper examines the case of a workshop in Edinburgh, Scotland, through the dual theoretical lens of diverse economies and social practice theory. This conceptual approach sees the space as a novel form of economic 'being-in-common', providing diverse and contradictory opportunities for post-capitalist practice. The paper draws conclusions regarding the limits and potential of such spaces for sowing the prefigurative seeds for a more inclusive, sustainable and democratic urbanism.

European Planning Studies, 2018

Former industrial premises provide material and symbolic resources for grassroots creative production, but planning is complex as these sites are transitory and excessive intervention may stifle creativity. This paper analyses the transformations of La Ribera (Bilbao), a mixed-use peninsula waiting to be redeveloped, where, in the meantime, creative-based grassroots projects have settled. Drawing upon relevant planning documents, documentary material and interviews with key actors, the paper explores (i) the spatial and built form advantages of these spaces, (ii) their impact on neighbourhood life and (iii) the contradictions faced in the planning process. The analysis suggests that spatiality plays a critical role, but it is threatened by market pressures, local governments' interest to encourage the city's reputation and neighbours' mistrust for the changes they may trigger. As a result, we contend that art spaces' institutionalization in the neighbourhood is decisive for their sustainability, but the conflicts that arise for the symbolic appropriation of space should be considered. Regarding policy, governance approaches that preserve users' autonomy and spaces' built form and atmospheric qualities are rather suitable responses if they are part of a comprehensive agenda that includes local socioeconomic conditions and neighbours' aspirations.

IDEA Journal: Design Activism: Developing Models, Modes and Methodologies of Practice , 2015

Developing models, modes and methodologies of pr actice Current members:

Capital & Class

Cultural work attracts much sociological interest and is often seen as typifying ‘precarity’. However, this scholarship rarely examines how ‘placemaking’ policy interventions affect the concrete conditions of cultural work. We study a major recent public/private policy intervention in the United Kingdom: Hull City of Culture 2017. This intervention embodied a multifaceted set of policy logics, combining the desire to boost arts participation, with a market-facing imperative to bolster the city’s ‘brand’. We examine what happened to the city’s ‘cultural projectariat’ (meaning those workers whose career depends on assembling sequences of discrete, time-limited funded cultural projects) during this event. The influx of funds created opportunities for good-quality work, but specific sources of insecurity persisted and in certain respects intensified: including the need for significant unpaid work and permanent competition for resources. City of Culture’s nature as a market-oriented ‘pla...

Rethinking Craft Neighbourhoods as Authentic Urban Places for Productive Cities of the Future: The Case of Galata, 2023

Neoliberal restructuring has affected cities worldwide, accelerating the fact that the service sector has taken the place of the manufacturing sector in city centres. Therefore, developing alternative urban policies to capital-oriented neoliberal ones is necessary, promising cities an equal, sustainable, and resilient future. This article focuses on the problems with current urban transformation policies implemented in the old city centre. It discusses a new urban space approach based on the concept of "authenticity" as a solution for maintaining traditional small production in three craft districts in Galata, Istanbul. Urban discourses that are produced by a politician or an institution and spread by highlighting communication channels are a suitable field to apply the Critical Discourse Analysis method. Considering urban discourses and urban history together has revealed that urban discourses create a fictional reality for implementing urban policies. Furthermore, it has been determined that today's discourses, in which Galata is defined as a tourist, art, and culture centre, ignore the existence of workshops in the region. While this situation strengthens the perception that the workshops do not belong there, it creates displacement pressure on the crafters. For this reason, making the productions in Galata visible through semi-structured interviews, drawing plans, sketching, and mapping is an essential part of the research. Then, three craft districts, Perşembe Pazarı, Şişhane, and Kuledibi, were analysed according to economic, cultural, spatial, and functional changes. These changes are discussed and explained one by one. As a result of these, suggestions were developed in order to sustain these authentic urban places.

2021

Portland Works is a building whose importance was recognised with Grade II* listing by Historic England, a mechanism to protect by law "particularly important buildings of more than special interest" (Historic England, n.d.). Built in the 1870s, Portland Works is an integrated cutlery factory listed as a rare complete example of large integrated cutlery works, with a layout that optimises the use of power in the cutlery manufacturing process, and for retaining both hand forges and steam grinding rooms (Historic England n.d.). Its cultural signifcance also lies in the fact that, over a hundred years ago, in 1914, it was the birthplace of stainless steel cutlery manufacturing, which is now a key part of Shefeld's identity. Despite its recognised signifcance and the fact that the building was home to a diverse community of thriving small businesses, including metalworkers, engravers, artists, wood workers and musicians, Portland Works came under threat in 2009, when its then owner lodged for "Change of Use" to convert the Works into bedsit fats. This sudden threat to both the FIGURE III.3.1 Community shares issue launch event at Portland Works. Photo by Mark Parsons.

Handbook of Diverse Economies, 2019

I explore three sites that I was involved in commoning in a post-industrial working class neighbourhood in Montreal: a garden on a city-owned plot of land, a mural on a stock-corporation-owned viaduct and a community-owned industrial building “expropriated” from a capitalist developer after a 10-year grassroots campaign. In each of these sites new property relations were forged, ones where a commoning-community manages the space and benefits from how the space has been shaped. Each community is engaged in a continuous process of making and re-making as it is confronted with powerful forces that seek to enclose or uncommon the property it has taken responsibility for. Commoning is thus always about struggle-negotiation, and a commons is more durable if its commoning-community is able to adapt to changing contexts, to push-back against exploitative and oppressive forces, to build on historical commons and traditions and to make strategic yet ethical choices about enrolling a diversity of actors into its midst.

2017

The gradual departure of heavy industry from Geelong over the last 30 years has left a legacy of forgotten places and an urban identity marooned between fading industrial modernism and an uncertain post-modern world. The rigor mortis of heavy manufacturing has been accompanied by rhetoric of despair about the city's future. Amid planning approaches focusing on the oft-competing ends of city-centre revitalisation and sprawling suburban growth, the defunct spaces of Geelong's industrial past are providing an unlikely crucible for renewed optimism, borne from grassroots creativity. This flourishing of creative expression in gritty spaces is a meeting of history, heritage and artistic endeavour that presents the palimpsest of the city writ large; creating unexpected connections between people and places once thought lost in the ethereal whispers of the past. The reinvention of these spaces as sites of and for new makers suggests a need to re-evaluate the significance of industrial heritage by engaging with the perspectives of those actively reinterpreting it. Focusing on the rejuvenation of an abandoned paper mill, this paper explores the recreation of Geelong's industrial heritage to understand the cultural role of these spaces and how they act as creative incubators, while considering the implications for connections between people, place and creative practice.

 How can the Triple Helix enhance universities as interactive partners in our innovation systems, and what are the challenges to the absorptive capacity of academic knowledge within firms and by other users?  How can the Triple Helix enhance place-based innovations, and what is the role of local innovation systems and local key institutions to build and accelerate regional clusters?