Pioneering Places

Pioneering Places was a partnership between cultural organisations and multiple councils across Canterbury, Dover, Folkestone and Ramsgate. The award-winning project highlighted the benefits of collaboration across these sites whilst giving each its own focus, drawing on the individual strengths of the local communities. 

Pioneering Places delivered clear benefits to council partners and to communities, including:

• over 29,000 community participants, reporting a measurable boost in civic pride

• over 140 local partners and community groups involved in delivery; 

• more than 1500 schoolchildren participating across 30 local schools 

• previously disused or forgotten heritage sites unlocked with an estimated development value in excess of £39 million. 

The challenge

The project was completed in September 2021 and first devised and developed as part of the national Great Place Schemes, jointly funded by Arts Council England and National Lottery Heritage Fund. Additional funding and support at local level was provided through Kent County Council with additional local support for the Ramsgate project through Thanet District Council.

The brief was simply "to make East Kent an even better place to live, work and visit by exploring civic pride and connecting artists and communities". Uniquely amongst the Great Place Schemes, Pioneering Places delivered outcomes focused on four different heritage sites/locations, each of which had been abandoned, fallen into disuse or was otherwise not meeting its full potential for development, cultural or community use.

All four of the Pioneering Places towns/cities are identified as priority one areas in the Levelling Up Fund prospectus, with three of the four being in "left behind" coastal towns including some of the most deprived wards in the country and with significant socio-economic challenges, (Dover, Folkestone and Ramsgate).  As such, there was a particularly strong focus on young people, older people, families and those marginalised through socio-economic exclusion. The high level project outcomes identified from the outset were:  

Outcome 1 

Sustainable partnerships will be built with other sectors, agencies and organisations.

Outcome 2 

Arts, culture, heritage and other local organisations will be more resilient.

Outcome 3 

Everyone will have the opportunity to experience and to be inspired by arts, culture and heritage.

Outcome 4 

Pioneering Places will enable the local economy to be boosted.

Outcome 5 

Culture will be reflected in local plans and strategies.

Outcome 6 

East Kent will be a better place to live, work and visit.

The solution

The project steering group met quarterly throughout the project and included membership of the delivery partners, the funders and councils. Rather than inviting the usual cultural officers more familiar to the cultural organisations, senior personnel and department heads from the planning, strategic operations and commissioning teams were included. 

The steering group helped provide leadership and advice throughout the project whilst also ensuring that each of the projects also maintained a close strategic fit with wider council priorities.  

Approaches within each of the four local projects included:  

Canterbury

Repurposing of a medieval property in the city centre, but in an area of low footfall. The project worked with local young people to identify a new purpose for the building and with architect, Guy Holloway, who focused on the challenge of providing the building with an active long term use that is sympathetic to its heritage values. 

(Local Lead Partner: Marlowe Theatre) 

More Info about Canterbury Project: http://culturalplacemaking.com/canterbury 

Dover

Architect Charles Holland worked with local community groups and The Land Trust to identify opportunities to develop Fort Burgoyne and its surrounding landscape as a new public realm and space for both local residents and for the new community soon to inhabit the Connaught Barracks/Homes England development neighbouring the Fort.  

(Local Lead Partner: The Land Trust) 

More info about Dover project: http://culturalplacemaking.com/dover 

Folkestone

Creative Folkestone worked with local community groups and schoolchildren to identify possible new uses for the disused brownfield site of the former gasworks, building from community memories surrounding the site. They then worked with East Architects to develop a new masterplan for the site to pitch to encourage Folkestone and Hythe District Council to purchase and develop the site.  

(Local Lead Partner and overall Project Lead Organisation: Creative Folkestone) 

More info about Folkestone project: http://culturalplacemaking.com/folkestone  

Ramsgate

Turner Contemporary worked with the council to find the right site for a new public artwork, commissioned and led by local primary schoolchildren and delivered by world-renowned artists, Conrad Shawcross. 

(Local Lead Partner: Turner Contemporary) 

More info about Ramsgate project: http://culturalplacemaking.com/ramsgate  

The impact

Outcome 1 

Pioneering Places always had partnerships at its core. This was embedded through the consortium of the lead delivery partners - Creative Folkestone, The Marlowe Theatre, Turner Contemporary and The Land Trust and host councils. 

Outcome 2 

Pioneering Places worked with more than 180 local businesses, 140 partners/stakeholders and over 100 freelancers, which continued throughout lockdown and into 2021. Connections with communities were maintained and plans with those communities pre-pandemic were delivered as public artworks, reopening previously hidden or closed spaces during the summer of 2021 as a symbol of re-emergence, civic pride, resilience and connectivity.  

Outcome 3 

More than 29,000 community participants were engaged with over 60,000 visits to project events and activities, including involvement of over 30 schools, 1500 schoolchildren and 11 universities/Further Education colleges. Community access to long-hidden, forgotten or disused sites included: 

• the opening of the magnificent Fort Burgoyne to the Dover community for the first time in its history
• providing access to the brownfield site of a former gasworks through Folkestone Triennial artworks
• celebrating Ramsgate's maritime heritage and increasing footfall along the town's East Cliff coastline through a new public art installation commissioned by primary schoolchildren.

Outcome 4 

More than 180 local businesses and 100+ freelancers were involved in the supply chain delivering the project, with a total project across all four sites of £1.69 million. This spend has unlocked previously disused or forgotten heritage sites with an estimated development value in excess of £39.6 million. 

Outcome 5 

Direct engagement with local planning resulted in positive changes in how culture and heritage is reflected in local plans and strategies including Kent County Council's five year strategy, Folkestone and Hythe District Council's Place Plan and the Thanet District Council Local Plan. 

How is the new approach being sustained?

As identified in the Commission’s Terms of Reference, “National funding for local culture is often fragmented and project-based, creating challenges around sustainability”.  

This is also the case for Pioneering Places – and the three year Great Place Scheme between Arts Council England and National Lottery Heritage Fund which supported it. 

The five outcomes identified from the outset were designed to mitigate against this by focusing on developing and embedding sustainable partnerships, supporting cultural organisations to be more resilient, engaging communities and directly influencing council’s local plans and strategies to embed culture and best practice. Some projects – including the Marlowe Kit project in Canterbury – have continued to be developed as key components in council’s Levelling Up Fund bids.  

In addition to the main activity, the project supported a significant advocacy programme and online Research and Knowledgebase, both produced and delivered by Five10Twelve, to help share best practice, learning, connect with the wider sector, policymakers and researchers and produce a lasting legacy. This programme included:  

Presentations and appearances at national events, conferences and webinars including:  

• Westminster Social Policy Forum: The Future of English Towns 

• Heritage Digital Now: Digital Leadership in the Heritage Sector 

• Creative Coalition: Multiple Towns, Maximum Impact 

• LGA: Place-based collaborations for Culture and Heritage 

• Palace of Westminster: Levelling up through culture and heritage 

The Research and Knowledgebase continues to be maintained by Five10Twelve through follow-on funding secured through Cultural Development Fund (CDF) Network and is on the Cultural Placemaking website.   

This site includes a research and reports database. This resource collates over 60 useful reports around creative, cultural and heritage-led regeneration and placemaking from publishers including Creative Policy and Evidence Centre, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, LGA, Arts Council and many others.

Pioneering Places was highly commended in the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) Planning Awards 2022, Best Project category, with the judges’ citation particularly highlighting the strength of the project’s partnership work. 

Lessons learned 

As more capital funding becomes available to councils for cultural infrastructure projects through the Levelling Up Fund, for example, the importance of revenue-funded activity to support such projects cannot be understated.  This supports community engagement and a well-funded programme of activity to activate a site. Local cultural organisations can help support this – including but not limited to Arts Council National Portfolio Organisations, (NPOs). 

Each of the cultural organisation partners played a powerful role as community hubs in their own towns in empowering local communities, including empowering children as young as primary school age groups to engage with planning, planners and architects. Local people were encouraged to get involved and shape the place where they live. Pioneering Places piloted new approaches to explore what the heritage of their localities meant to them, why these disused or forgotten spaces were so important and to empower communities to work with artists and creatives to develop a future vision for each site. 

Particular innovations and leading practice were around involving and engaging young people in planning and placemaking, with a particular focus on primary schools. The aim of Pioneering Places was to move beyond a top-down education model and to demonstrate how children and young people can have agency in - and be agents for - change and placemaking in their own town or city.  

The Pioneering Places approach is exemplified by the project in Folkestone. Lead delivery partners Creative Folkestone brought primary schoolchildren in Folkestone into contact with professional architects, engineers, planners, filmmakers and even drone pilots. This led to a deeper level of engagement, exposed the children to new and interesting careers and empowered them to voice what they thought about where they lived and how an area can be changed and transformed. 

Contact

Jason Jones-Hall, email: [email protected]  

Pioneering Places: Levelling Up Communities through Cultural and Heritage-led Regeneration