The Urban Physic Garden according to local residents. On behalf of social change agency Uscreates, students from the MA Design for Development, including myself, conducted a mini creative consultation with local residents on a pop-up garden space in Bankside. The aim was to find out how to increase their use of the space, by discovering what they wished to see in it and what they could offer. We initially encountered quite a lot of misunderstanding regarding the intention of the project to be an open community space. The main factor seemed to be an inconsideration for the often simple needs of people, which we assumed resulting from insufficient preliminary involvement. (See Appendix 1 for more details.) 07/2011. Photos: Paula Ligo and personal files.
involvement from all strands of the population. With this in mind, the sustainability challenge appears to be a communication and social cohesion challenge too. This also applies at a grassroots level, for community-led initiatives. Transition Towns hero Robert Hopkins (2010) suggests that environmental groups must challenge their perception “that some sectors of society are ‘hard to reach’” and start considering “the possibility that it is actually we who are ‘hard to reach’, that for many people, due to how we work, communicate and position ourselves, we can be seen as remote, distant and irrelevant.” This project is therefore framed by the need to find a language that includes diverse aspirations, and engages diverse communities around the sustainability narrative.
“Any movement towards unified action [lacking] the diverse tapestry of cultures and ethnicities of a local community, [is] lacking some shades to its rainbow.” (Pickering 2011)
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