Archives – 2009
Your Space or Mine?
4 Feb 2009 – 14 Feb 2009
- Do current urban renewal and development models offer hope of shared and integrated futures for interface communities?
- What role can interface communities have in determining their future development?
- What role do architects have in any of this?
Funded by the European Union Peace 2.1 programme, through the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council, this exhibition has its roots in a request by an interface community group to place community interest first in proposals for a key river-front site close to the Brandywell/Fountain interface in Derry/Londonderry.
The resulting project involved Derry City Council, DSD, statutory and private development agents and included poetry sessions, art workshops, guerrilla gardening and temporary urban ‘transformations’ in determining community ambition.
While proposing creative ways to discover and release ‘locked–in’ social, cultural and financial capital in contested spaces, project recommendations also direct these valuable resources towards sustainable and shared futures for interface communities.
“In 2008, little time is given to doubts regarding progress in the current Northern Irish ‘peace process’. It is clear, however, that substantial challenges exist in progressing from political ambitions for a cohesive and integrated society to the delivery of substantial and meaningful shared outcomes at community level. These challenges are nowhere greater than in the realisation of shared and inclusive post-conflict urban environments, particularly across interface communities. Increasingly these challenges need to be met in a context of reduced UK and European financial support and increased local and global economic competition.”
From the preface to the Your Space or Mine? funders’ report (available to download from the project website)
Related
PLACE Blog: Launch night: Your Space or Mine?
Project website: Your Space or Mine?