Differential space in underused town centres: community appropriation of space through creative practices of arts-led urban regeneration

Abstract

With community coalitions taking up rights to urban spaces within and against the neoliberal city, this investigation asks; what are the activities that feed into this appropriation of space? How do citizens exercise rights to urban space, form new diversionary and ad-hoc uses of space, and extend these actions into longer term plans for community-led urban transformation?

This investigation explores the evolution of community spaces via creative practice, and the subsequent development of these spaces and practices into wider urban transformation plans. Examining the hypothesis that it is not merely the transfer of ownership and management of space into community control which should be the focus of self-managed urban spaces, this investigation moves forward a proposition that it is possible to become more attendant to the process of space formation and transformation as a social process. As per Henri Lefebvre’s conviction that space is a social process, formed through social relations, this research explores the input of cultural projects and socially engaged arts participation into the production of space. This perspective is also a rejection of the emphasis on architectural space as the solution to social-spatial impoverishment.

Taking Lefebvre’s emphasis and commitment to space as a social production as a point of departure, the relationship of citizens to the production of space as a social as well as physical or material output is highlighted as important, particularly where cultural activities influence this in a productive relationship. Lefebvre’s production of space concepts are widely regarded as having emancipatory potential, particularly in application to situations of grassroots appropriation of underused urban spaces for community use. Therefore, this research adds to existing illustrations of appropriated space from Lefebvrian scholarship — with many of these existing empirical explorations driven by his concept of differential space. This investigation specifically provides a contribution to an under-developed understanding of how creative practices feed into urban appropriation and the formation of differential space.

The research contributes this knowledge by explaining how an arts organisation and community development trust are active in the production of urban space. A case study forms the basis of this research, involving embedded participation in a range of creative or artistic events and gatherings, organised by both an arts organisation and its offshoot organisation, a community development trust. Both organisations have formed resistance and disruption to the existing condition of their urban surroundings — a town centre marred by property speculation and the demise of high street retail. Over time the organisations have developed their own practices of challenging the existing pattern of urban occupation, doing so by appropriating redundant space and forming everyday social, creative, or activist activities in which townsfolk participate, often changing otherwise underused urban spaces. Akin to Lefebvre’s right to the city concept, the evidence uncovered shows a renewed activation and inhabitation of the town with aims which extend beyond merely housing rights or economic gains, instead forming a wider and all-encompassing demonstration of using buildings, streets, and in-between spaces to meet the needs and desires of townsfolk. The empirical examples provided also explain a situation whereby artistic productions are intrinsic in developing the relationship between townsfolk and appropriated space, and the discussion reveals how this relationship might further a resistance to spatial abstraction and commodified spaces of capital consumption.

In terms of policy and practice, the research is situated in a context of newly evolving practices of urban community buy-out, which have occurred from legislative changes in Scotland in 2016, which made it possible for urban communities to pursue community ownership of land and buildings. The organisations studied are part of the first generation of third-sector organisations pursuing this emergent practice of urban community ownership, whilst the arts organisation studied was the first artist-run community development trust in the UK.

Drawing from these pathfinding examples of arts-led community development, the empirical evidence offers new knowledge by exploring the role of creative practice within urban community ownership, and the role of creativity in shaping these assets and the social spaces which have the chance to evolve therein.