• Names are important

  I like “slack space” – it appeals to the bohemian in me, and it will to a lot of artists – but it would also scare off at least some local councillors and bigwigs.

  (I suggested an idea along these lines regarding our local empty Woolworths to my councillor – who’s very open minded – and he winced visibly).

  For most local officials, the nearest they get to an initiative like this is a council-backed window box scheme or a festival. (Something centrally organised, with a glossy brochure).

  Different authorities would take different views. Some would be very progressive and “get it”. Others would be freaked out and feel threatened by the fuzzy, ad hoc nature of it all.

  Somewhere between leaderless anarchy and glossy brochures – that get shoved through everyone’s door and no one reads – there’s a happy medium. The collective voice of that median opinion would make itself known, and find a name that everyone seems to like. Or maybe we’d use several names for different purposes but they would mean the same thing.

• What are the overlaps with similar ideas and initiatives for local renewal?

  A formal link up with the Fairtrade movement would be number one on my list, because what good’s a gallery without a café?

  Most of the other debate around quality of life and locality has been about transport and patterns of consumption (mainly of food). What role does art, artisanship and culture – as broadly defined as you want – have to play in new models of local renewal?

  For starters:

  New Economic Foundation’s ‘Tools for local economic renewal’: www.neweconomics.org/gen/tools_top.aspx

  The Living Streets initiative: www.livingstreets.org.uk

  Feel free to email me with thoughts about any of this. info at thebeekeepers dot com.

Update 22/4/09: Dougald Hine’s posting about this too:

Last week’s announcement accompanied the launch of a guide for town centre managers on “Looking after our town centres”. To make sure the widest range of people have access to information about the grants and other measures, though – and to contribute to the success of the projects they create – it would be great to see a practical handbook for “How to Freecycle Woolworths!” (At least, that’s what we’d have called it in the days of Pick Me Up…)

The Communities and Local Government booklet Dougald spotted links in nicely with a conversation I had recently about cultural asset mapping and the work of Colin Mercer.

Using slack space is about much more than making high streets look presentable for a year or two, but is about the soul of communities and public spaces. This will only be a temporary use of the space, a transitory phase, like the Seasons.

We can look to history to see how this has worked in the past, and also to see how it can shape the future. (“The further back you look, the further forward you can see” in Winston Churchill’s famous phrase).

I find these particularly inspiring whenever I think about this cycle in our culture:

• Ronald Hutton’s ‘The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual year 1400 – 1700’
• Shirley Collins’ ‘America Over the Water’.

This article from the Guardian on 8th April is interesting too…

Common ground
By Peter Hetherington

The recession is shifting attitudes about land ownership, making it easier for local people to club together to buy sites – from inner London to rural Devon.

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