The art of placemaking

The (Un)Changing Political Economy of Arts, Cultural and Community Engagement, the Creative Economy and Place-Based Development during Austere Times

“…The approach has also been closely connected to discourses of placemaking and/or place-based development [21,59] which view communities and local urban settings as 'demarcated space[s] of governance and regulation, [...] of shared cultural meanings that engender a sense of belonging, [and of] relational entit[ies] shaped by [their] relations with others within larger networks [and] the movement of capital and economic strategies' [60] (p. 2). To Courage [61] (p. 623), the interplay of these factors 'has an improvement function to better the material quality of public space [including] the quality of lives within it'.…”

“…BSC's programme of work has shown how barriers can be broken down among differently situated stakeholders through skilful marshalling of community assets and corporate resources for the public good. To borrow Cara Courage's words, the communities and publics that BSC serves 'create and recreate the experienced geographies in which they live [drawing on] a networked process "constituted by the socio-spatial relationships that link individuals together through a common place-frame"' [61] (p. 623). That process 'involves participation in both the production of meaning and the means of production of [their] locale' [61] (p. 623).…”

“…To borrow Cara Courage's words, the communities and publics that BSC serves 'create and recreate the experienced geographies in which they live [drawing on] a networked process "constituted by the socio-spatial relationships that link individuals together through a common place-frame"' [61] (p. 623). That process 'involves participation in both the production of meaning and the means of production of [their] locale' [61] (p. 623). This happens subversively sometimes and nearly always collaboratively.…”

“…Not only is this achieved through 'fostering local partnerships among different players to tackle place-specific issues', but also utilising 'spatial proximity, trust, faceto-face interaction and the sharing of common resources [to generate] opportunities for [democratic and sustainable] governance that do not exist at larger scales' [50] (p. 7). This state of affairs casts contemporary ACCE work in a light that suggests such work serves certain elements of the creative economy and local place-based development ventures well in terms of facilitating 'collaborative, citizen-led interventions that focus on place improvement, community capacity building and economic development, which can in turn feed into a larger strategy or objective' [61] (pp. 626-627).…”

“…There are also issues of capacity and practice standardisation: there is a danger that the practice becomes the sector's go-to one-size-fits-all solution to [ACCE], attractive to city authorities in a time of fiscal austerity, appealing to impoverished administrations as an attractive box-ticking and 'cheap' solution that acts as a salve to urban realm problems without any structural and meaningful change. [61] (pp. 627-628) ACCE work in the position described here is misappropriated by dominant hierarchies in politics, policy, established institutions and corporate business to replicate dominant ideologies, modes of engagement and practices that undermine possibilities to mobilise and engage communities, publics and urban locales in critiquing and questioning the current societal order and related austere conditions.…”