Project Update: Creating a Civic Space on George Street
Last year, you celebrated with us as we announced the news of our first ever long-term space, within the wider redevelopment of 38-40 George Street in Oxford’s city centre.
Now, we’re here to update you on our once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a new civic space for communities living and working in the city.
We’ve been actively engaging with local residents, community groups, neighbours and partners to explore what this new hub could look like. Working collaboratively with local artists, architects, JKA, local citizens and the wider project partnership led by Marick, we’ve been developing a vision and design for the space that is grounded in local needs and dreams.
Our work is centred around this question:
“What could a civic space, that creates the conditions for joy, learning, creativity and connection, look like?”
Read on for our design principles, the challenges we’ve faced, which community groups we’ve been talking to, and what’s next…
Community engagement
In line with all we do, this project has also had a focus on creating meaningful dialogue with the community. The first phase of engagement included setting up a Community Advisory Board (CAB), holding one-to-one meetings with stakeholders, and conducting public events through market stalls and an open consultation. These activities helped us understand and appreciate local needs, ensuring the new space will reflect what people want.
The Community Advisory Board celebrate their final session in May with reflections on the process, cake and guerilla gardening
Meaningful dialogues
We are dedicated to ensuring each unlocked space responds to its unique character, works with local strengths, builds on existing initiatives and responds to local needs. Engagement with the local community is central to our process. It’s not just a tick box. It’s continuous, deep work.
Our meaningful dialogues were with a range of groups and local citizens – reaching out beyond our existing networks, as well as ‘in-reaching’ to consult with our existing partners, networks and community of residents. We were therefore able to create widespread awareness of this unique opportunity, explain our approach and listen to local needs and dreams in order to shape the design and vision for the future space.
Guiding this work are a set of principles which underpin our approach:
> Be transparent and share the learnings
> Build non-extractive, people-centred relationships
> Cultivate cultures of care
> Meet people where they are at
> Be curious and embrace complexity
> The engagement is part of the activation
Activities & audiences
From January to June 2024, we conducted a range of activities, including:
6 Community Advisory Board sessions (including 2 co-design sessions)
3 market stall engagement days
1 young voices workshop
1 artist workshop
1 public consultation (with commercial developer Marick Estates)
The space will be accessible and welcoming to all. We have identified five priority audiences:
Local creatives and organisers – artists, makers and other creatives, as well as groups and organisers historically excluded from city centre spaces, or who do not feel the city centre is a place where they belong.
Visitors to Gloucester Green Market – with a focus on regular, local visitors, and the key role of market traders.
Young people – responding to a clear need for spaces where young people can just ‘be’, relax and be creative.
Local parents, carers and young children – to access events, workshops and activities that are child-friendly.
A secondary audience grouping will consider how visitors to the city can benefit from the space. This includes guests of the new Aparthotel to be operated by Staycity.
Community Advisory Board co-design session at the Community Works in April
Community Advisory Board (CAB)
Composed of 11 local residents selected through an open recruitment process, the CAB met fortnightly across four months to guide the project development. Members attend as individuals rather than representing specific groups, bringing their personal experience of living in Oxford.
Together, they offer knowledge, skills and experience from sectors including the arts, music, theatre, making, community development, youth work, grassroots organising and running community activities. The group has been devised to centre the voice of local citizens in the design development, and play a crucial role in our engagement process in shaping the design and vision of the space.
The CAB will continue to be involved through December 2024, with hopes for ongoing collaboration in future phases in 2025.
Read more about our CAB members here.
Gloucester Green Market
Adjacent to the site is Gloucester Green Market, a vibrant social asset and one of the oldest public spaces in Oxford. With the new building becoming its neighbour, we wanted to speak to those who regularly visit the market, as well as the market operator and traders.
In partnership with TORCH, we hosted three market stall engagement days in April. We held open enquiries and a series of interactive boards to ask attendees what they think is important about the local area and what they’d like to see in the new space. We have used the findings to inform the project development.
Makespace engagement lead Alex Lui speaking to local residents at Gloucester Green market April 2024
Young Voices
In January we engaged with seven local primary schools as part of the ‘Beyond COP21 Symposium’, based around the Sustainable Development Goals, hosted by Wychwood School. Pupils participated in design activities that considered how the space could be used, how it might feel, how they would use it, and what would make it a space where they felt at home.
We held conversations about how they see their city, and how they imagined it could look differently in the future.
Workshops at Wychwood School with local schools attending the Beyond CPO21 Symposium, January 2024
Public exhibition & arts workshop
All of our activities and community engagement resources were brought to the Old Fire Station for a major public exhibition on the 15th May, hosted alongside developer Marick Real Estate.
We shared the design development journey, artefacts and designs from school pupils, market engagements and CAB meetings, alongside design drawings from our architects, Jan Kattein Architects (JKA).
During the event, we began to develop ideas for the space’s visual identity with a participatory art workshop, hosted by Saroj Patel. This helped us weave together our learnings from each stand of work into common themes.
Designing in dialogue
As part of the design development journey, we’ve been delighted to work with award winning practice Jan Kattein Architects (JKA).
JKA were selected for their strong commitment to collective and participatory design approaches, and their impressive track record of creatively transforming tricky sites and spaces into vibrant civic and community infrastructure.
Their previous work has included projects with Meanwhile Space CIC and many relevant public works, such as Fore Street Living Room Library, Spark Lab, and Paper Garden.
Fore Street Living Room Library, Enfield, London. An inventive and flexible retro by Jan Kattein Architects
JKA have worked closely with Makespace, the CAB and the wider project team led by Marick to design the space through dialogue and collaboration. JKA have responded creatively to design principles developed with the CAB and a range of competing challenges. Here are the final design principles:
Collaborative – build and steward together
Human-centred – starting with people
Thrifty – making use of the skills and resources we find around us
Flexible – adapting to changing needs
Activist – encouraging civic action
Nurturing – a safe space that welcomes and supports many groups and their interests
Regenerative and ecological – beyond sustainable, creating a positive ecological impact
Visionary and transformative – making change at a systemic level, inspiring others
Design challenges
The key design challenge is to hold the physical design of the space as lightly as possible. To ensure it can be highly flexible and ‘stack functions’ – accommodating many different types of uses and groups simultaneously – but not so lightly that it lacks form and clarity of purpose.
There is a delicate balance to be found in crafting a space that can respond nimbly to different needs across a day, a week and from season to season. As a transient city often dominated by students and tourists, Oxford is in constant flux across the year.
The space also needs to draw people in with tangible resources that give it a unique character:
> Comfortable places to sit and meet a friend
> Attend a workshop
> Participate in a performance
> Discover something new about Oxford
> Find out about community events in the area
We’re working hard to ensure the space can bring all these ideas together, and more.
Space for transformation
The design process is emergent. We are gradually shaping the space after every conversation, and refining this into a strong vision and clear range of functions, which will form the heart of the space.
We are committed to shaping a welcoming home for local people that will create the conditions for life: for connection, joy, learning and creativity.
It will be a bold and brave space, unafraid to tackle some of the big challenges our city faces. A space which supports our collective transformation to a more distributive and regenerative society.
With JKA, the CAB, artist Saroj Patel and the wider project team we have reached a great milestone. You can view the latest design drawings below:
What’s next?
A decision on the planning application, submitted by Marick Real Estate, is expected in October 2024. While we wait, we are composting our learning and planning the second phase of community engagement, due to start in Spring 2025.
In the next stage, we aim to deepen our relationships with neighbouring organisations and priority audiences, focusing on young people, parents, carers, children and market visitors. We will continue our work with the CAB, which centres local voices in the space’s design, programming, engagement approach and governance.
We will focus more on new approaches to support the transition from an extractive to a regenerative economy that fosters mutual support and solidarity prepared to take on the big challenges of our time.
If you have any questions or feedback, contact us on [email protected]
Further updates will be posted to the 38-40 George Street project page, or sign up to our newsletter to hear the latest.
