A Place For Words: Building In Context
What happened?
BEAM is a Yorkshire based arts, architecture and learning organisation. BEAM has been commissioned to deliver a series of Building In Context workshops, as part of a national scheme funded by CABE and English Heritage. The workshops are aimed at urban design professionals and local stakeholders, to stimulate conversation and learning about how to design new buildings in a heritage context. Each workshop explores a local case study, and focuses on the broader context of the new building or site being developed. To date, BEAM have organised Building In Context workshops in Blackburn, Halifax, Blackpool and Wakefield.
As part of each day long workshop, Jane Field - a writer who is also the Head of Programmes and Services for BEAM and the Yorkshire co-ordinator for the Building In Context Programme - creates new poems exploring the context of the area in which the workshop is being held. These pieces are created partly from her own perspective on the local area, partly from comments and ideas raised by workshop participants throughout the day. Jane closes each workshop with a reading of her poem. “When people explore place, it's nearly always visual,” Jane says. “This is about responding to place in a different creative way. People appreciate that different perspective.”
Project Gallery
Building In Context Toolkit, a resource developed by EH, CABE and the Kent Architecture Centre, which aims to stimulate a high standard of design when development takes place in historically sensitive contexts. The founding principle is that all successful design solutions depend on allowing time for a thorough site analysis and character appraisal of context.
Participants in Building in Context workshop, Halifax, 21 October 2008 exploring the local area
Jane Field, writer, Head of Programmes and Services for BEAM and the Yorkshire co-ordinator for the Building In Context Programme
What made it work?
- The poetry aspect of the workshop brought a different perspective to the day, reflecting on the context of the case study examined over the course of the workshop. People appreciated it as a different way of looking at things, which complemented the usually more visual approach.
- The inclusion of creative writing in this context made people feel that poetry was more accessible than they might otherwise have felt.
Further information and links:
The links below take you to brief project reports from the workshops in Halifax, Blackpool and Wakefield, which include Jane's poems.
