Co-Research

Castlegate Common Manifesto - reduced.pdf

Castlegate

Castlegate Commons Community Pavilion, February - May 2024

Inspired by the vision developed by students through the Live Project 'Castlegate Commons' in Oct-Nov 2023, Live Works was commissioned by Sheffield City Council to facilitate a co-design process with local stakeholders. This work builds on the last three years of co-production that have developed a clear community-led approach to the development and use of the park and its facilities. Using the 'Castlegate Commons Manifesto' as a foundation, we have worked with local community stakeholders to develop a vision for the design, operation and stewardship of a new pavilion in the Castle park.Throughout each stage, Live Works has aimed to facilitate a transparent, representative and effective co-production process that delivers meaningful engagement with local stakeholders and the public towards the development of the Castle site. We held two workshops and a study trip to London:

Workshop #1 Foundations: Sharing knowledge and aspirations, reaching common understanding, establishing good principles of design, developing an initial brief.
Study Trip: Visiting inspiring community/ecology/cultural venues and meeting the people who run them to understand how the projects were developed and are now used and managed sustainably
Workshop #2 Vision: Considering governance & time-scales, developing an initial spatial brief

Local Government Report, EDI, Participation, Placemaking, Design, Participatory, Carolyn Butterworth and Leo Care

Castlegate

Co-production Index, September 2023 - January 2024

This digital index brings together for the first time all the work that students and academics at the School of Architecture have produced for Castlegate over the last decade.Castlegate is the historic birthplace of Sheffield, located at the confluence of the Rivers Don and Sheaf. This now dilapidated area of the city centre was once a bustling home to 800 years of market trading, theatres, industry and one of the largest mediaeval castles in England, demolished in 1650.Since 2014, students, graduates and academics from the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield have been co-producing design work and participatory research with community groups, local independent businesses, public-sector institutions, Sheffield City Council and colleagues from the Departments of Archaeology and Computer Science, to develop an ambitious shared vision for the future development of the area.This co-production process is envisioning, campaigning for and supporting the development of a new neighbourhood, accessible to all, that celebrates the rich heritage and social history of Castlegate while creating a viable sustainable future.The School of Architecture, through its project office Live Works, is acting as an effective mediator between grassroots and the local authority, helping to build capacity towards meaningful co-production at all scales. Our students’ creative engagement activities, research and design ideas have been instrumental in building a vision, shared by all partners, to deliver an ambitious, community-driven, socially, economically and environmentally sustainable new city quarter.Website, Climate Emergency, EDI, Participation, Placemaking, History and Representation, Participatory, Carolyn Butterworth and Emre Akbil

Citizens' Assemblies

Climate Re-assemblies, 2023 - Ongoing

The project aims to rethink how citizen participation is conceived in relation to the formulation, documentation, and continuity of Climate Assemblies. Between October-December 2023, The South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) is holding a Citizens’ Assembly involving 100 citizens on climate futures, asking participants the following questions: “The way our climate is changing will impact us all. How should we respond, to build a thriving and sustainable future for South Yorkshire?”Climate Assemblies are an emerging form of deliberative democracy employed to provoke conversations around the issues and impacts of climate change within communities. However, there tends to be limited engagement with participants and communities following an assembly, and it is not evident how their recommendations are acted on. For this project, we will specifically explore the potential for innovation in pre event collective agenda-setting, in-event (inclusive, visible, interactive) documentary, and post-event evaluation and progression – and how that, in turn, impacts shared climate future imaginaries, the types of solutions being put forward, and who participates in assemblies. These questions will be explored through a series of workshops on Climate Assemblies and the co-creation of an interactive documentary (idoc) with a diverse range of stakeholders as citizen-researchers, including both academics (from the fields of communication, politics, architecture and art practice) and non-academics from local authorities, community climate-focused organisations as well as communities underrepresented in the climate discourse. Event, Presentation, Climate Emergency, EDI, Placemaking, Participation, Material Cultures, Participatory, Emre Akbil and Carolyn Butterworth

Live projects

Liveness Charter and Web Resource, 2023 - 2024

The Liveness Charter has been created as an advocacy tool, to celebrate, connect and support all members of staff involved in live community engaged learning in the School of Architecture.The Charter seeks to share the ethos of Liveness with everyone in the School of Architecture, as well as our external partners, so that they have an understanding of the activities, values and aims of the Liveness approach. It is our aim that this will galvanise our work and articulate the benefits of Liveness to all stakeholders. The Liveness Charter and Web resource has been included in the Elevate Directory of Good Practice at the University of Sheffield.Website, EDI, Participation, Pedagogy, Placemaking, Participatory, Leo Care and Carolyn Butterworth

Castlegate Urban Room Public Engagement Report.pdf

Castlegate

Castlegate Futures Urban Room, November 2022

The Castlegate Futures Urban Room ran from 12-20th November 2022 and was set up to facilitate the engagement of stakeholders and local people with Sheffield City Council’s plans for a new public space to be built on the Castle site, and for the future of Castlegate more widely.Live Works and MArch Studio in Residence worked in partnership with Sheffield City Council and the Castlegate Partnership (a collaboration with local community groups, universities, charities, arts organisations and independent businesses) to facilitate a programme of exhibitions, discussions, tours and activities to engage people in the past, present and future of this extraordinary part of our city. The previously co-produced Castlegate Common Manifesto, also facilitated by Live Works, informed directly the public engagement programme.The new public space will open up access to the River Sheaf, provide spaces for arts and community events, and reveal the rich heritage of the area, including the remains of the Castle. It should be a place for people from all over Sheffield of all ages, backgrounds and abilities to feel connected to each other and to their city’s history - where everyone can feel welcome. It is hoped that this will catalyse further regeneration of Castlegate that places people, heritage and the environment at its heart."Since securing Levelling Up funding in October 2021, Carolyn has facilitated an inclusive co-production process, including running stakeholder workshops in November 2021 and June 2022 with a variety of stakeholders, occupiers, and the Council, to support the detailed design of the Castle site development.
She supported a public engagement programme in November 2022 which led to planning approval in May 2023. As part of this, Carolyn set up and promoted the Castlegate Futures Urban Room and ran a variety of public workshops which were invaluable." Lucia Lorente-Arnau, Principal Development Officer, Sheffield City CouncilPresentation, Event, EDI, Placemaking, Participation, History and Representation, Participatory, Carolyn Butterworth and Emre Akbil

Castlegate Common Manifesto - reduced.pdf

Castlegate

Castlegate Commons Manifesto, November 2021

Live Works was commissioned by Sheffield City Council to deliver a series of workshops with local stakeholders to inform and enhance the regeneration of the Castle Site in Castlegate, building on 8 years of research, visioning and engagement by the School of Architecture in the area. This co-production process aimed to support the development of the new public realm so that it benefits as much as possible from the extraordinary potential of this unique site and its rich community context. The workshops engaged existing members of the Castlegate Partnership and other local stakeholders to ensure representation of the diversity of the area's population and grassroots activities. The workshop themes were:

Revealing the Outdoor City
Revealing Innovation
Revealing Arts and Culture
Revealing Heritage

The award of Levelling Up funding required meaningful community engagement to inform directly the project design. 13 co-produced recommendations from the workshops were presented in the 'Castlegate Common Manifesto' and these recommendations informed directly the planning application that was submitted by Sheffield City Council in February 2023. Beyond the stakeholder workshops, Live Works ran the 'Castlegate Futures Urban Room' in November 2022 that gathered public feedback on the Manifesto recommendations, further informing the Council's plans. Report, EDI, Participation, Placemaking, Participatory, Carolyn Butterworth and Emre Akbil

Participatory design

Little City of Makers, September 2016

‘Little City of Makers’ was a project by Live Works in partnership with Arbourthorne Community Primary School for the Festival of the Mind. Staff, students and graduates from the University of Sheffield School of Architecture helped 60 ten year olds from Arbourthorne Community Primary School to construct a model of the future Sheffield that they would like to see. We worked with the children at their school and at Live Works using a variety of materials to make the buildings, structures, green spaces and transport systems of their future city. The children suggested the themes of Play City, Working City, Animal City, Night City, Nature City and Moving City. As they build their city they have were encouraged to ask: How will the city be made in the future? What will it be made of? Who will make it?Through the Festival of the Mind the city has been exhibited to the public as it grows. The project aimed to provide a valuable experience to the children, giving them the opportunity to learn new skills and introducing possibilities for their future interests and livelihoods. If our cities of the future are to be vibrant, inclusive and sustainable places to live and work we need to include children in their design. This is a chance to develop imaginative ideas for the challenges of the future including climate change, scarcity of resources and changing demographics. Along the way we also hope to inspire the children to become the architects, planners, engineers, policy-makers and engaged citizens of the future.Event, EDI, Participation, Pedagogy, Placemaking, Participatory, Carolyn Butterworth and Leo Care

Provocateurs or Consultants.pdf

Co-production research

Architecture and Resilience, September 2015

This paper presents co-production as the means by which dialogue can be fostered and control devolved to communities, by exploring how partnerships between SSoA, SCC and local partners have been formed through recent activities in Castlegate. Opportunities and tensions inherent in this relationship are often manifested through questions about the role a university can and should play in building community resilience. Drawing on interviews with students, academics and local partners in Sheffield, the differing priorities, timescales and expectations inherent in this partnership are examined, and suggestions made, so that it might serve as a model for future co-production in urban regeneration. In doing so, the aim is to explore how work produced in academia can maintain its critical pedagogical position while still fulfilling a useful role in facilitating co-production in local communities with, and even on behalf of, local authorities.The paper has now been published as an interview in the book ‘Architecture and Resilience’.Journal Article, EDI, Placemaking, Participation, Pedagogy, Participatory, Carolyn Butterworth

ReMake Castlegate Culture Consortium.pptx

Castlegate

ReMake Castlegate, September 2014

ReMake Castlegate was a project developed in partnership with Yorkshire Artspace and commissioned artists Simon le Ruez, Anne-Marie Atkinson and Clare McCormak to explore the past, present and future of the Castlegate area of Sheffield. As part of Festival of the Mind 2014 local people were invited to work with a large physical model of Castlegate, to express, record and share memories, opinions and ideas for the area. The project was hosted at Exchange Place Studios, where, over the course of the Festival, we invited local people and businesses to add to and remake parts of a large physical model, capturing what has been lost, what remains, and what could be. Over the week we had 800 visitors and saw Castlegate re-made by many hands, all revealing the area’s diversity and idiosyncrasies. The findings from the project were presented at Urban Design Week and to the Culture Consortium and SCC. The project was the catalyst for years of SSoA working in Castlegate through multiple Live Projects, Live Studios and co-production with SCC and local stakeholders.Presentation, EDI, Participation, Placemaking, Participatory, Carolyn Butterworth and Leo Care

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