https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5405-7809
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Abstract
The Grange Pavilion project began in 2012 when residents of Grangetown, Cardiff began to consider what they might do to act as a catalyst for the redevelopment of a former Bowls Pavilion vacated following funding cuts under austerity budgets. In a context of then Prime Minister David Cameron’s Big Society speech, the Localism Act 2011, and the launch of Cardiff Council’s Stepping Up Toolkit encouraging community groups to form and take over council services and assets, residents understood the task of activating a civic space as something which might become an “all-consuming project.” This paper reflects on eight years (to date) of gathering, valuing, and preparing for the intended and unintended consequences of taking on a small civic space, and critically considers the role of architectural education and practice within a Community Asset Transfer.
Acknowledgments
The Grange Pavilion CIO is composed of 60% residents and 40% representatives from Grange Pavilion project, Grangetown Community Action, Cardiff University, Taff Housing, RSPB Cymru, Cardiff Bay Rotary Club and Cardiff and Vale College. The Grange Pavilion project is supported by The National Lottery Community Fund; Welsh Government; Cardiff University; Cardiff Council; Garfield Weston Foundation; HEFCW; WCVA: The Moondance Foundation: The Clothworkers’ Foundation; Wales & West Housing; Cardiff Bay Rotary Club; IKEA; ASDA; Lloyds Bank Foundation; Colin Laver Heating; Virgin Money Foundation; Welsh Water; Moto in the Community Trust; Go Compare; Benham Architects; IBI Group; MOTT MacDonald; Holloway Partnership; The Urbanists; Development Association Wales; Davis & Jones; Art Shell; Techniquest; Tramshed Tech; The Hideout Coffee Shop; Wild Thing; and multiple individual donations.
Notes
1. Anonymised comment at Grange Pavilion Project “Choosing the Architect” session, recorded by Neil Turnbull and Mhairi McVicar, June 20, 2016.
2. https://grangepavilion.wales/about/2019-agm-annual-report/ (accessed May 6, 2020).
3. Mhairi McVicar and Neil Turnbull, “The Value of an Architect in a Community Asset Transfer,” unpublished RIBA Research Trust Award, 2015. The research collated and analysed three years of emails, meeting minutes, notes from meetings and workshops, verbal and written comments in public events, and conducted interviews with members of the Grange Pavilion Project over a two-year period.
4. Anonymised email to Grange Pavilion Project, August 20, 2013.
5. David Cameron, “PM's Speech on Big Society” (Speech, February 14th, 2011), https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pms-speech-on-big-society (accessed June 22, 2018).
6. Chancellor of the Exchequer, “Budget 2010,” Copy of Economic and Fiscal Strategy Report and Financial Statement and Budget Report, June 22, 2010, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/248096/0061.pdf (accessed May 8, 2020).
7. Cardiff Council, STEPPING UP: A Toolkit for Developing and Managing Services and Assets, https://www.cardiffpartnership.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Stepping-Up-Toolkit-Amended-1.pdf (accessed June 26, 2020), 4.
8. Angela Brady, “Foreword,” in Guide to Localism-Opportunities for Architects, Part Two: Getting Community Engagement Right, ed. by James Parkinson (London: Royal Institute of Architects, 2011), 1.
9. “Introduction,” in Guide to Localism-Opportunities for Architects, Part Two: Getting Community Engagement Right, ed. by James Parkinson (London: Royal Institute of Architects, 2011), 2.
10. Ibid., 2.
11. Cardiff Council, “STEPPING UP,” 12.
12. Ibid., 30.
13. Suzanne Hall, “Designing Public Space in Austerity Britain,” in Economy and Architecture, ed. by Juliet Odgers, Mhairi McVicar, and Stephen Kite (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2015), 226–236.
14. Anonymised email to Grange Pavilion Project, October 7, 2013.
15. Nishat Awan, Tatjana Schneider, and Jeremy Till, Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 29.
16. Ibid., 28.
17. https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/architecture/courses/undergraduate/undergraduate-portfolio/bsc-architectural-studies-portfolio/vertical-studio (accessed May 8, 2020). The Vertical Studio is an annual Welsh School of Architecture teaching space in which 1st and 2nd year undergraduate students break out of design studio for an intense two-week period.
18. https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/community-gateway (accessed May 8, 2020). Community Gateway was developed as a partnership platform by eight interdisciplinary academic and professional services staff at Cardiff University in 2012 and launched in 2014. It works across all disciplines and departments to pair academics, students, and professional services staff with community partners. Founders were: Sally Anstey (Nursing and Midwifery); Sophie Buchaillard-Davies (Optometry); Sion Coulman (Pharmacy); Richard Day (Healthcare Studies); Richard Gale (Planning & Geography); Mhairi McVicar (Architecture); Rhys Pullin (Engineering); Lorraine Whitmarsh (Psychology). Community Gateway now comprises Lynne Thomas (Project Manager), Ali Abdi (Partnerships Manager), Sarah Hughes (Communications Officer), Sophey Mills (Grange Pavilion Development Officer) and student ambassadors Josephine Lerasle (Architecture) and Andrea Drobna (Journalism).
19. https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/view/45735-cardiff-futures (accessed May 8, 2020).
20. https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/view/52405-transforming-lives-through-universitys-most-ambitious-community-plan-ever (accessed May 8, 2020).
21. In the 2014 Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation, Grangetown is categorized in the top 10% most deprived areas of Wales for income, health, employment, housing and physical environment. Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation. https://gov.wales/welsh-index-multiple-deprivation (accessed September 4, 2019). 2011 Census data highlights Grangetown as a multicultural area of Cardiff: 38% of the population in Grangetown identify as being of “Mixed Ethnicity,” “Asian,” “Black” or “other ethnicities” as opposed to 15.3% in the whole of Cardiff. https://www.cardiff.gov.uk/ENG/Your-Council/Have-your-say/Ask%20Cardiff%20Library/Cyfrifiad%20Grangetown%20-%20Grangetown%20Census.pdf (accessed September 4, 2019).
22. Anonymised email to Grange Pavilion Project, August 20, 2013.
23. Anonymised comment, Community Gateway open evening, Grangetown, January 2013.
24. An Architektur and Mathias Heyden, “On Consensus, Equality, Experts and Good Design: An Interview with Roberta Feldman and Henry Sanoff,” in Agency: Working With Uncertain Architectures, ed. Florian Kossak et al. (Oxon, UK; New York, NY: Routledge, 2009), 61–76.
25. Sharon Haar, City as Campus: Urbanism and Higher Education in Chicago (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2011).
26. Peter Blundell Jones, Doina Petrescu, and Jeremy Till, Architecture and Participation (London: Spon, 2005).
27. http://www.liveprojects.org (accessed May 8, 2020).
28. Mhairi McVicar and Neil Turnbull, “The Live Project in the Participatory Design of a Common Ethos,” Charrette 5, no. 2 (2018): 117–135 discusses the pedagogical approach to the live project throughout the development of the Grange Pavilion project.
29. Community Gateway and Grange Pavilion Project, “Grange Gardens,” Vertical Studio (Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University, May 2013).
30. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1991).
31. Royal Institute of British Architects, Client & Architect: Developing the Essential Relationship (2015), https://www.architecture.com/-/media/GatherContent/Client-and-Architect-developing-the-essential-relationship/Additional-Documents/RIBACLIENTSUPP1pdf.pdf (accessed September 4, 2019). The report writes that “[c]lients think architects who listen and understand properly are rare.”
32. Anonymised comment, Community Gateway public event, Grangetown, May 2013.
33. Ibid.
34. Suzanne Hall, City, Street and Citizen: The Measure of the Ordinary (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), 9. In this quote, Suzanne Hall cites Stuart Hall, “Culture, Community, Nation,” Cultural Studies 7, no. 3 (1993): 349–363, 361.
35. The Ideas Picnic in May 2014 was followed by a Storytelling Day in Sept 2014, a three-week strategic planning workshop culminating in a planning and celebration day called Love Grangetown in May 2015, walking workshops in Sept 2015, Love Grangetown 2016, Love Grangetown 2017, Love Grangetown 2018, and Vertical Studio 2019. All were co-produced between Grange Pavilion Project and Cardiff University.
36. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 27.
37. Jessica Walford, “This is the New Community Cafe Trying to Bring People of All Faiths Together: The Hideout in Grange Gardens Offers Homeless People Coffee, Free Books and Jobs for Young People,” Wales Online, August 4, 2017, https://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/new-community-cafe-trying-bring-13428758 (accessed May 5, 2020).
38. https://grangepavilion.wales/about/grange-pavilion-youth-forum/ (accessed May 8, 2020).
39. https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/community-gateway/our-projects/healthy-and-active-grangetown/mental-health (accessed May 8, 2020).
40. Hall, City, Street and Citizen, 5.
41. Alison Mathie and Gord Cunningham, “From Clients to Citizens: Asset Based Community-Development as a Strategy for Community-Driven Development,” Development in Practice 13, no. 5 (2003): 474–486.
42. Anonymised comment, “Choosing the Architect” session.
43. Ibid.
44. https://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/article/1678847/transforming-cardiffs-grange-pavilion-architectural-values-community-participation (accessed May 20, 2020).
45. Anonymised comment, Community Gateway and Grange Pavilion Project, “Grange Gardens.”
46. Bryan J. D. Spain, Spon's First Stage Estimating Handbook, 3rd ed. (London: Spon Press, 2010).
47. Vacancies of speculative housing developments in the area were mapped in three successive years between 2016–2019 by Cardiff University Masters of Architecture and Urban Design students, led by Professor Aseem Inam (unpublished).
48. Brett Christophers, The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain (London; Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2018), 11–12.
49. Marianna Mazzucato, The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy (London: Penguin Books, 2019), 230.
50. Ibid., 19.
51. https://futuregenerations.wales/about-us/future-generations-act (accessed September 4, 2019).
52. Anonymised comment, “Choosing the architect” session.
53. Ibid.
54. http://www.deborahaguirrejones.co.uk/ (accessed May 8, 2020). Deborah Jones’ art practice included inviting contractors to her home for tea breaks, documenting their findings of clay and glass bottles in the site, and facilitating portraits of park users and construction workers as a method of continuing public conversations about the facility as it shut during construction.
55. Anonymised comment, Community Gateway public event, May 2013.
56. @PentreGardensCF11 tweet, 20 June 2019.
57. Anna Minton, Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the Twenty-First Century City (London: Penguin, 2012), 199.
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Mhairi McVicar
Dr Mhairi McVicar is a Reader at the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University, and is Academic Lead of Cardiff University’s Community Gateway. She studied and practiced architecture in Aberdeen, Chicago, the Orkney Islands and Cardiff. Her research examines the role of the architect, processes of architectural practice, definitions of value and quality in architecture, and the co-production of civic space. Publications include Precision in Architecture: Certainty, Ambiguity and Deviation (London: Routledge, 2019); Mhairi McVicar and Neil Turnbull, “The Live Project in the Participatory Design of a Common Ethos,” Charrette 5, no. 2 (2018) 117–135; and Mhairi McVicar, “Specifying Intent at the Museum of Childhood,” Architectural Research Quarterly 16, no. 3 (2012), 218–228.