Cultural Placemaking in Britain’s largest New Town
With the UK government now committed to a new generation of New Towns, we caught up with Mari O’Neill, Director of Northstowe Arts, about the challenges of Cultural Placemaking from scratch in Northstowe, Britain’s largest New Town currently under development.
What are the unique challenges around Cultural Placemaking in a New Town?
Northstowe is a new town being built from scratch, well within commuting distance of Cambridge but far enough away to build its own distinctive character and unique sense of place. Unlike many new developments around the UK, it’s not an extension of an existing community – all the community infrastructure and facilities need to be built as well as the planned 10,000 homes. Seven years since the first residents moved in, around 15% of the homes are complete; the second primary school opens this year as well as a nursery and sixth form to add to the existing primary, secondary and special school; there’s a temporary community centre and an independent café-bar.
Starting on a Cultural Placemaking journey can be daunting even in more established places. What was your motivation for starting such a venture in an emerging New Town like Northstowe?
I live in a nearby village – one of the reasons we moved was that Northstowe would have a town centre with a library, shops and cafes by the time our children are old enough to cycle there independently (still a few years away!). I’d heard that Northstowe was being developed as a “healthy new town” and could see that sports and outdoor activities were being actively invested in and encouraged by the local authorities. I knew that the arts and creativity could play a really complementary role to all this – but I couldn’t see that anyone was doing anything about it. I had previous experience working in the arts sector so I started having conversations with other local residents, creatives, and people working for the local authorities to explore the best route to bringing more arts and creativity to the town.
Were there particular challenges in drumming up support locally?
From local residents, and particularly those either working professionally in the creative industries or seeing the arts as a valued leisure-time activity, it was immediately apparent that they would welcome and support more arts-based activity in Northstowe. Conversations with local authorities and developers were trickier though: when we spoke they seemed to understand what the arts and creativity could bring to Northstowe, but without arts development teams at district or county council level and no provision for the arts in planning agreements, it was difficult to prioritise in amongst everything else.
Sounds like you had to take a very hands-on and proactive approach to make something happen. How did you set about delivering your first public activity?
After several months of discussions exploring different set-ups both independent and within existing structures, two other local residents and I delivered our first activities as an unconstituted voluntary group, on a shoestring budget with funding secured from a county council youth pot. Northstowe Winter Festival was an umbrella festival: a listings site and promotional campaign to make it easier for residents to find events and activities happening in the town over the busy winter months. We also put on lantern-making workshops for the community and in schools, and organised a parade to the festive lights switch-on in partnership with several other community organisations and groups.
These activities demonstrated both that we could deliver large-scale (for Northstowe!) events and that there was demand for them. A few months further down the line and several more iterations of proposals later, some Section 106 funding was reallocated to us – enabling us to form as a Community Interest Company and match-funding several projects we wanted to undertake.
Becoming constituted as a CIC helped secure additional funding from other national funders, including National Lottery Heritage Fund. How does a New Town deliver a heritage-focused cultural project?
Before building work had begun in Northstowe, archaeological investigations had produced a lot of Roman pottery including much that was too small or broken up to be historically significant. The county council approached us about using this discarded material creatively – otherwise, five tons of it would have to be reburied! We commissioned a local artist to work with the new Northstowe community, creating a sculpture whose design was inspired by the heritage of the land and using the Roman pottery to create a mosaic. At the moment, the sculpture is located in the garden of the temporary community centre, until its future home in the first permanent community centre is ready in around 18 months time.
So the sculpture – some public art for Northstowe – was the primary output?
Yes and no. For us, this project was more about process than output: it was an opportunity for the new residents to connect to the heritage of the land they’re now living on, to hold the pieces of pottery used by people living here centuries ago and to create something tying the new and ancient communities together. It was a moment of realisation that yes, we’re building a new community from scratch but that’s not the whole story. And it was an opportunity for this community, who are “consulted” but for whom every other physical thing here is built for them, to feel a sense of ownership and creatorship of something in their landscape.
It sounds like you’ve done great work to connect and mobilise the local community. How important is it that this also connects with the wider development of Northstowe?
During early planning of Northstowe, the decision had been taken that the building of non-residential and business units would wait until they were financially viable – that is, until the Northstowe community was of a certain size. Sticking rigidly to this, the lead developers of the first phase of building in Northstowe were very commercially-driven. Now, Homes England – the government’s housing and regeneration agency – are the master developers of Phases 2 and 3 (including the town centre), and seem to understand that a different approach is needed.
So has this new approach from the developers helped in forming a partnership with Homes England?
As a nascent arts micro-organisation, working with a massive national governmental organisation like Homes England is not without its challenges. Like many other major developments, there are often issues of feeling like consultants are parachuted to do things “to” – rather than with – the community, so there’s a lot of learning involved on both sides. We’re developing a really good relationship with Homes England and have delivered several projects either with, on behalf of, or funded by them.
“As master developer for Northstowe new town, place making and community activation are important to Homes England as they help make the town a more desirable place to live and work within. Northstowe Arts are a trusted partner, working both for and alongside Homes England to encourage creativity and bring the community together. A number of collaborations, including the Midsummer Festival, lake art sculptures and the Northstowe Neighbours film, have helped build community and establish a sense of belonging in Northstowe.”
Dean Harris, Senior Planning and Enabling Manager (Large Sites – Northstowe), Homes England
A lot of projects we work with in established places have such a strong focus on developing local cultural infrastructure and events and activities around it. How do you approach this challenge when such infrastructure doesn’t exist – or is still being planned or constructed?
We’ve been commissioned to develop other public art projects including designing the vinyl wrap of a temporary community centre, a digital mural for some hoardings, and sculptural signage for two of Northstowe’s new lakes. We’ve also run community cinema events both indoor and outdoor; rerun the lantern parade as Light Up Northstowe and added the Midsummer Festival as another annual spectacle event at the other end of the year; trialled several small-scale weekly sessions across different artforms to gauge community interest; and contributed arts activities to various other events across the community. Almost everything we do is in collaboration with others. Out of necessity – the almost total lack of built community infrastructure – groups, organisations and businesses led by people living in Northstowe and the surrounding area are energetic and actively want to work together: we’re a really strong network.
We’ve talked about how you’ve hit the ground running to help develop a cultural offer for Northstowe. What are the challenges of balancing this alongside developing Northstowe Arts as an organisation?
Northstowe Arts’ perennial challenges, as with so many in the arts sector, are funding and capacity – or lack thereof! Because we’re absolutely passionate about delivering activity for people living here right now (so much of the narrative coming from developers is focused on the future in Northstowe – hugely frustrating for those who have been living here for seven years) we’ve not had the capacity to build an income-generation model beyond project funding and commissions. We desperately need to expand the core team in order to deliver more now and move to strategic development of a financially resilient organisation.
But what’s the best way of doing that, both for Northstowe and us as an organisation? We know that community-centred development and creative, ongoing engagement are key – and we want to continue to demonstrate how much better for an over-consulted community it is to do it this way. In the coming months, subject to successful fundraising, we want to bring in an academic partner to explore ways of measuring our impact on the community, and the impact of the arts and creative activity on community development and placemaking. From this, we want to develop a creativity roadmap: a structure that enables Northstowe to develop as the lively, creative community we believe it could be, supported by our activity.
What is the longer term vision for Northstowe and Northstowe Arts?
Long-term, when there’s a town centre and non-residential units available, we have an idea of what we want: an arts café-bar with a small stage, with dance studios, artists’ studios, and spaces from which we can continue to develop the larger-scale collaborative events. But is this what Northstowe needs and wants? And how do we as a business get from here to there? Over the next few years we’ll continue to engage the community to explore and develop our ideas, and we’ll continue to work with the local stakeholders – councils, developers, businesses – to demonstrate the importance of the arts and creativity in placemaking and community building.
That partnership mindset is certainly key. What would you say to anyone wanting to connect with Northstowe Arts?
We’d love to get to know you if you’re in a similar situation and could share ideas. In particular, your thoughts would be welcome around advocacy and persuading local authorities and developers of the importance of arts and culture in early planning of new developments.
“We are very lucky to have Northstowe Arts at the heart of our community, organising fantastic events that bring our growing town together. Prioritising arts and culture is essential, not just for enjoyment and engagement, but for building a sense of belonging and supporting mental health. These are crucial resources that help create a vibrant, connected and resilient community, and we must ensure they remain a key focus as Northstowe continues to develop”
Cllr Firouz Thompson, Cambridgeshire County Council
Meet the Neighbours
Delivering for the community in any place – and especially in a New Town – involves developing a strong partnership mindset, which is something we have explored further through Northstowe’s work in our feature article for Arts Professional. This is something which Mari and her colleagues at Northstowe Arts share with others in the community. Local resident and trustee of Northstowe Hub, Peter Cope, sees this as vital to the future development of the town;
“As a grass routes charitable organisation in Northstowe we see that creating a vibrant new community is about far more than buildings and infrastructure”, says Peter. “Partnering with Northstowe Arts has provided opportunities to bring together diverse people and help those moving in put a unique mark on this place by exploring their creativity.”
