Creating Common Ground: Placemaking with Young People

ECF at the London Festival of Architecture 2023

On June 1st, 2023, the London Festival of Architecture (LFA) 2023 commenced, initiating a month-long commemoration of the built environment and various aspects centred around both buildings and cities. As a part of this year’s theme, ‘In common’, ECF organised an expert panel discussion titled ‘Creating Common Ground: Placemaking with Young People’.

The aim of this conversation was to unpack how creating common ground between built environment professionals, local and national decision-makers and young people may provide the key to creating socially sustainable spaces. The expert panel was curated to explore how young people can be empowered to help shape built environments and take active roles in making places. During the conversation, they shared examples of best practices and discussed the challenges, importance, and benefits of involving young people in planning and what needs to change to make youth participation more widespread.

For the event, ECF invited three expert panellists:

• Dinah Bornat, Director, ZCD Architects;
• Kerry O’Driscoll, Young Researcher in Residence Programme – Countryside Partnerships, LSE Cities and Make Space for Girls;
• Zimmie Sutcliffe, Senior Project Coordinator, London Development Trust.

The event was chaired by Oliver Deed, a placemaking and community engagement specialist and Managing Director at ECF.

The first speaker, Dinah Bornat, spoke about the four principles of a child-friendly city:

1. Car Free
2. Connections
3. Access
4. Overlooking.

This was followed by her suggestions on best practice engagement through the example of a recent project in Earl’s Court. She emphasised the importance of the engagement process in providing young people with agency and upskilling them as opposed to just the project outcomes. Her presentation ended by quoting a participant who recently engaged, “It has changed how I look at community participation and links with developers. It doesn’t have to be bad.”

We then heard from Kerry O’Driscoll, our second panellist, who spoke about the ‘Young Researchers in Residence’ programme.  The programme promotes an inclusive approach to city-making which enables young people, traditionally under-represented in planning and design, to take an active role in shaping their local environment, particularly in relation to public space design and provision. She elaborated upon the methodology, process, and continued outcomes of the programme.

Our final panellist Zimmie Sutcliffe spoke about the My Place initiative that trains and employs local young people aged 13-21 to develop agency in the built environment and decision-making. He spoke about how the programmes train young people to discover their community needs, access local knowledge and ideas within their community, and represent these views to decision-makers.

The presentations were followed by an insightful Q&A session. Outlined below is a summary of the points taken away from the discussion, as mentioned by Oliver Deed in his LinkedIn post:

• The process of youth engagement has value in itself, it doesn’t all have to be about outcomes. If a process results in up-skilled and active young citizens, that’s a great thing.
• Youth engagement should not be an isolated workstream. If young people and adults are brought together to discuss issues, you generally get better outcomes.
• Payment for participation is not a panacea. It helps, but people have to be inspired to get involved.

If you would like to learn more about how ECF can help support built environment programmes and especially the involvement of young people, please contact the team at: info@engagecf.co.uk