Botanic Concrete

Botanic Concrete, a brand new public engagement project devised by CCA, is looking for participants to join with us in reimagining the Garnethill area and become part of a long-term planning and research group including artists, teachers, gardeners, social workers, students, residents and members of the public who interact with Garnethill. Do you live or work here? Would you like to be part of imagining and creating new uses, ideas and plans for the area?

The initial phase will involve mapping the project and all ideas, discoveries and suggestions will be shared with the public on a dedicated website. The project continues with a period of networking, planning, talks and presentations before sharing the findings with the public. If you are interested in becoming part of Botanic Concrete, please email botanic.concrete@gmail.com or call 0141 352 4922.

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Botanic Concrete is a project set up by CCA that will work with the users and residents of Garnethill. It aims to find out what the community wants from their area and how they feel about local issues. Working creatively and with an alternative approach, it will try to find ways of sharing and developing knowledge of our area.

The plan is to work with all parts of the community - people from all cultures, ages and backgrounds - to create a truly democratic understanding of the needs and desires of the people. This includes families living in the area, the Chinese community, students of GSA and pupils from local nurseries and schools, as well as asylum seekers and refugees - a vibrant community in transit who are also potential users of Garnethill.

The project will seek to re-empower citizens, giving ownership to the community over their shared environment in a way that could challenge traditional ways of city-planning.

In order to do this we will conduct local research, starting with a mapping of the neighbourhood to create an image of peoples’ current needs, wishes and problems. We could discuss things like regeneration, social housing, or the state of local amenities. The residents and users of the area will produce this research, alongside local institutions, organisations and businesses.

After the remapping, a series of workshops for the re-imagination of the area will be organised by the participants, with facilitators working in different fields. We would aim to question and influence traditional city-planning by challenging techniques used by more dominant and centralised institutions.

Our hope is to reconnect to Garnethill and stimulate local organisations, to begin looking again at their position within the neighbourhood. We see Botanic Concrete as an opportunity to use the arts to make a positive contribution to cities of the future, and to facilitate local populations to envision community ownership and minimise dependency on others.

We believe that this model of supporting urban community development through creativity could be beneficial to our local area and also become a template for other communities to use to take ownership of their own civic space.

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Viviana Checchia took part in the European Cultural Foundation’s second Idea Camp (23 - 25 September 2015) in Botkyrka (Sweden). The fifty participants – Idea Makers - were invited to further develop their ideas on this year's theme, “Build the City”, and submit a proposal for a Research and Development (R&D) Grant. Botanic Concrete was Viviana's proposal, and we are delighted to say she was successful in securing the grant. “Build the City” is about applying the principles and ethics of the commons to the transformation of the city, its communities and its economy. It is about people creating more sustainable cities through social cooperation and active participation with culture at its heart. For more on the Idea Camp and the other projects, see here and watch Viviana discuss the proposal below.

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