Four main themes emerged for me over the course of my research:
- The role a writer can play in community consultation.
- How writers can help create a sense of place.
- How an engagement with writing and literary forms can positively influence the content of regeneration schemes.
- How writers can create a vocabulary for regeneration: a unique way of looking at and expressing the complexities of the regeneration process.
Key to the success of any of these possibilities is that the writer is treated as integral to the process; that they are engaged from day nought and are involved in and listened to throughout the whole process of the regeneration project. So often, developers who might have money for an ‘art’ element to their project, think about that art as an add-on, the icing on the cake. Tony Cooper from Bussey and Armstrong projects insists that engaging an artist at the very beginning of the project is the only time to do it
. Otherwise, he says, you risk ending up with something pretty that stands in front of a scheme and does not relate to it in any way.