The Role of Culture in Place Planning

“The South African writer Antjie Krog described meeting a nomadic desert poet in Senegal who described the role of poets in his culture. The job of the poet, he explained to her, is to remember where the water holes are. The survival of the whole group depends on a few water holes scattered around the desert. When his people forget where the water is, the poet can lead them to it. What an apt metaphor for the role of the artist in any culture. The water is the history, the memory, the juice, and the elixir of shared experience.”

Anne Bogart, American Theatre Director

There are all kinds of ways to measure place and to benchmark how good a place is and what aspects need improving. Place indicators include important things like access to services and green spaces, how resilient communities are when it comes to adapting to climate change. But there is no set of agreed indicators that get granular with the role of culture when it comes to place planning. It’s vaguely claimed that culture is intrinsically good when it comes to place making, but we don’t get much further than that. 

The lack of a place for culture when measuring places makes no sense. The first thing that’s taken away from countries and communities in times of war or to break them apart/weaken them is their culture – their language, history, traditions, stories etc. In Scotland we saw this following the defeat of the Jacobites at the Battle of Culloden in 1746 when the British Government broke the Highland clan system and communities in all kinds of ways including eradiating their culture. If culture is the first thing to be taken away, it must be important. It must be the glue that holds identity, voice, social networks, history and a sense of belonging together. 

We also know that creative subjects are important as part of the school curriculum. Drama enables skills such as team building, creative problem solving and social skills, while art lessons give us access to our creativity and stimulates our imagination. All of which contribute to a balanced and positive self-development. The need to have access to all of this doesn’t suddenly end when we leave school. They are part of our lifelong needs and part of how we create a functioning society and individual and collective wellbeing.  

If culture so important, how can we ensure it’s not missed out in place planning and bring culture to the cross-sector tables tasked with making communities work?

“everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community”.

Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

On 20 January we ran a workshop with the aim of addressing this. We hoped that through the workshop we would be able to create:  

• A draft list of indicators for a potential Place Standard Tool through a cultural lens and reasons why they are there/further notes on why they should be there. 
• A draft list of projects/research that supports each indicator and where the gaps are. 

The workshop came about because Open Road is part of Culture of Carbon Scotland’s Springboard Cohort tasked with looking at the role of Culture within 20 Minute Neighbourhoods. The outcomes from this workshop will feed into the wider work of this cohort. Also, Open Road was part of the Culture Collective programme and the workshop formed part of our legacy activity for this national project. 

One workshop is nowhere near enough time to address the role of culture in place planning, but we made a productive start to achieving our aims and some clear indicators and measurables emerged over the course of the afternoon. Including: 

• The need for a Community Hall/Space/Hub/Outdoor Spaces  
• The importance of representation in cultural activities 
• Access to creative and cultural opportunities 
• Creative skills, education and learning 
• Local creative opportunities 
• Community cultural exchanges 
• Community archives
• Storytelling
• The importance of digital as well as in person platforms and access
• The role of culture and creativity in creating wellbeing 

All of these points were discussed and expanded upon and a list of existing projects and organisations whose work already includes these was drawn up. 

Other observations and notes came out of the workshop. Including: 

• It was felt that the Place Standard Tool wasn’t the best framework, but we found it hard to come up with an alternative. It was felt that culture reached across/weaved through the whole existing Place Standard Tool or it could have a section of its own within this framework. 
• There is a need to work across sectors and for cultural organisations join wider conversations about place.
• We need places where people can try things out. 
• There is a need for positive intentions and political will to value culture within local decision making. 
• Statistics and reporting are required to evidence the indicators listed. 

The workshop didn’t come up with any neat conclusions, but it did open up a conversation that’s been needed for a long time, especially post covid and in times of a cost of living crisis and increased social isolation. We still have a lot of work to do around the social and societal benefits of culture in communities, as well as the importance of this work in looking at place through the lens of alternative economies, such as a Wellbeing Economy.

The work of the Springboard Cohort on the Role of Culture in 20 Minute Neighbourhoods is ongoing. Get in touch if you’d like to find out more and get involved: Lesley Anne on info@openroadltd.co.uk

With thanks to Pippa Cook from Collective Architecture for presenting on Liveable Neighbourhoods and introducing the Place Standard Tool, Matt Addicott from Platform in Easterhouse for hosting the workshop and inputting into its design, Ben Twist at Culture for Climate Scotland for inputting into the workshop design and other speakers on the day – Katheryn Welsh from Culture Counts, Emma Henderson from Cove Park and Donna McGill from Thriving Places, Easterhouse.