A Place for Words
Regeneration. It is one of those much used words that still just about clings onto its meaning, derived from the Latin regeneratus, regenerare: create again
. Regeneration is a political buzzword; the answer to Britain’s social and economic problems. It’s exciting stuff: creating stronger communities, better places to live, increasing the skills, health and wealth of our most deprived areas. And there is a lot of political will, and money, attached to it. The government has a £38 billion Sustainable Communities Plan which they claim demonstrates their commitment to create better places to live - renewing existing towns and cities and creating new places to live that will stand the test of time.
I am a writer and a literature development worker with a fascination for place: cities, maps, architecture, rural landscapes. There is a fizz of excitement for me in the relationship between people, words and place. Which is why I have spent the last six months, and a cultural leadership bursary from NALD, exploring what writers and literature can contribute to regeneration in the UK. Regeneration is a huge and multi-faceted beast, so I consciously narrowed my research and thinking to how writers can affect and explore peoples' relationship to the places in which they live, and how writers can contribute to the physical regeneration of place. I have spoken to numerous people associated with writing, literature development, town planning and urban/rural regeneration, and looked in detail at three projects: Bussey and Armstrong Project's Westpark development in Darlington; the regeneration scheme in Tintagel, North Cornwall; and the work of playground designers Snug and Outdoor.