Co.LAB #2 Gifts for Dudley High Street
This lab note is part of a series by Holly Doron and Jo Orchard-Webb sharing the process of our High Street experiment with Co.LAB, a collaborative laboratory embedded within the School of Architecture & Design at Birmingham City University. 15 students from four design disciplines, guided by Matthew Jones and Hannah Vowles, are reimagining regenerative futures for Dudley High Street.
Travelling together
The design process can be a way of taking people on journeys. When designers openly travel with others through their creative and experimental processes, they might leave a trail of artifacts that invite curiosity and interaction.
Tangible memories invited care home residents to swap stories of their favourite walks as ‘tokens of value’, which were then interpreted into ‘objects of exchange’, called TopoTiles. These artifacts became valued prompts for conversations, aiding reminiscing and storytelling.
Lindsey Colbourne’s Utopias Bach project engaged artists and communities in ‘exploring possible futures at a scale that they feel they can influence’. This process of imagining and creating became a platform for conversations and ideas for ‘real world’ experiments:
“Utopias Bach is taking place in the context of existential threats to the human and more-than-human world: We are in the times of a ‘great turning’ of such depth and scale ‘how can we not feel inwardly undone by the anxiety of not knowing how to respond’ (Bruno Latour)” (Here is a guide to ‘take you to your Utopia Bach in 2050, as a human or a more-than-human’)
What if the artifacts generated from these design journeys are intentionally created as gifts?
A Gift Economy
The power of gifts, and the agency of gift giving and reciprocity is deeply rooted in many indigenous communities. (This essay by Robin Wall Kimmerer is a lovely introduction to the gift). Gifting serves a range of important purposes that are particularly relevant to the Co.LAB students’ intention to explore regenerative practice, and design a regenerative High St. As a way of organising ourselves, a gift economy is a way of redistributing resources so everyone has enough — a model of abundance and interdependence. This long tradition of bonding peoples together through gifting is in contrast to High Streets defined by scarcity and individualism. Gifting also serves to connect people with the more than human world and instills a healthier relationship with nature that is regenerative. Again, this is in contrast to the more prevalent exploitative relationship with nature that defines our extractive economies. The rituals of gift giving generate flows of gratitude and reciprocity within communities and with nature. These exchanges explicitly weave connections making our interdependence with each other and nature more visible. What does it mean to design with these flows in mind?
The students were invited to create a gift for Dudley High Street: a seed of an idea. The task called on their ingenuity and creativity to use the resources surrounding them in imaginative ways and make something of value. The gift is a tangible, emotional, and aesthetic manifestation of the students regenerative design process that links in a meaningful way with our lab goal of a kinder, more connected and creative Dudley High St. As imagined and crafted artifacts, the gifts invite and manifest creativity. They have been designed with care and are freely given, and as such are an expression of kindness. The gifts will generate gratitude and nurture bonds to the people and spaces on Dudley High St thus enabling deeper connections on the High St perhaps nurturing a sense of belonging. We wanted the students to experience the ritual of the gift in part as a metaphor for the abundance and interdependence design principles that are core to regenerative design practice and central to our lab principle of use nature’s guidebook.
Getting to [virtually] know Dudley High Street
The first part of the students’ journey was to understand the physical context of the street, and peel away these layers to creatively map what lies beneath and in between: where the life is, what is happening, and how it is changing.
But how do you get to know a High Street that you can’t physically visit? In the pre-Covid world, we would have had the pleasure of seeing groups of design students exploring the High Street, taking notice of the overlooked and causing other walkers to double take. They would have been standing whilst sketching the tangible and intangible elements of the High Street, attracting curious eyes, and perhaps even questions, from passersby.
In the spirit of gift giving (and our principle encourage abundance thinking and practice), Dudley’s Time Rebels took their lockdown strolls to the High Street to gather photos and videos for the students who are unable to visit. The students also harvested what perceptions they could of the High Street from information available online. This revealed a disparity between ‘in real life’ and virtual narratives of the High Street. Guided by our lab principle join the dots, the Time Rebels and CoLab team are now developing various prototypes to reveal and connect different ways of knowing and experiencing the High Street, and how this can enrich the existing online narrative.
The Gifts
Amy White, Interior Design | My gift was created to highlight the importance of connections to Dudley high street through the use of transportation which is key to encouraging people to come and use the high street. The jigsaw shows a map of Dudley with the different types of transport and was made from paper and card.
Emma Langley, Architecture | This gift aims to address the disconnect between Dudley and its industrial history. Once the ‘Capital of the Black Country’ its high street now looks like any other. With the intention of public engagement, this gift could be handed out at CoLab Dudley’s base. Starting from there, people would be able to follow the map and visit the places marked by stars — all of which hold some historical significance whether it be the location of an old factory or school — where one missing puzzle piece may be located. Only after visiting these locations would they be able to complete the puzzle and see the final image of Dudley’s high street.
Jamie Baker, Architecture | This gift represents the green spaces around CoLab Dudley and the connections they have to the high street. The black point marks the location of the High Street and the other pins mark each green space within the High Street’s immediate location. The lines act as a travel route that you may take in order to get from one green space to another. From this we can establish that there is a lack of greenery in some spaces. This then impacts the High Street as people do not need to use it as a travel route. By simply creating more of these green spaces like in the top right it will add more connections to the High Street which will draw more people to this particular location.
Jiang Weitong, Product & Furniture Design | This gift is made of cardboard and acrylic. A map of the High Street is drawn on the acrylic sheet, and the distribution of buildings and roads are drawn on different acrylic sheets. Through my research, I know that the annual precipitation rate in Dudley is very high, but from the photo, there is no place to block the rain beside the buildings on the street, so I want to add the element of the poncho and make it transparent, so that it will not block the sun, and it is also more convenient for people to travel.
Jin Yuanshun, Product & Furniture Design | Dudley High Street is not only inhabited by human beings, but also by animals. Looking back on the formation of most cities, we can see the common attraction of urban landscapes to humans and and wild animals. I used recycled corrugated paper to make this creative painting. It shows the causal relationship between climate change and animals’ loss of habitat and forced into urban life when human beings are developing cities. It highlights the importance of protecting the environment while developing Dudley High Street in the future.
Kierapal Bindra, Architecture | The meaning behind this gift is composed of three main foundations which are biodiversity, social and enclosure. The box represents the enclosed feeling of the surrounding buildings that you receive when walking down Dudley High Street. The ‘High Street’ gives the impression that the buildings are closing in on you, with very little open space around. The open element of the box is to create an airy space which is what Co-LAB Dudley is trying to achieve and make the atmosphere more sociable for the local people/ community. Therefore, attracting more people to the high street. Conducting research it is evident that the ‘High Street’ severely suffers from a lack of green space resulting in a lack of biodiversity across Dudley. Centrally, located within the box is a rose which resembles the biodiversity and the need for growth amongst the ‘High Street’. The white rose connotes the purity for the future of Dudley High Street and what it could become.
Kirren Channa, Architecture | My purpose of my Gift to Dudley High Street is to encourage the users to become involved in the changes that occur in a place they use. The aim is to gain feedback from the users of the game to inform any progress made, this way, the focus of regeneration can come from the users themselves, becoming a collective collaboration. Through the users interacting with each other on the High Street using this game, the presence of users can be recognised, reminding the people of a sense of community to promote and celebrate going forward.
Kirstina Edgar, Interior Design | After investigating the history, heritage, culture and institutions of Dudley and its High street, I made a kaleidoscope gift based around the themes ‘overlooked’, ‘resilience’ and ‘layered’. Although sight is the most immediate sense in which many people engage with their surroundings, it’s not until you look beneath the surface and start to see things from a new perspective that you fully appreciate what is there and the potential beyond. I wanted people to engage with my gift, have fun and evoke a sense of nostalgia, whilst also using it as a way to look forward to what the High Street could be, all the while embodying the CoLab Dudley principle of allowing this object to be a co-op piece. The gift relates to the people and allows for each user to interpret and express their own thoughts.
Luciana Micarelli, Interior Design | A cardboard box that when opened shows mirrors in all internal faces reflecting a web made with strings that represents Dudley as a complex system of interconnected elements. The Dudley High street has lack in colour, public spaces, and green areas, reflecting the local population that is experiencing deprivations and vice versa. Making a high street attractive can improve the local population in health, social and economic aspects.
Maddison Thomas, Interior Design | From the research that I collated, I found that the High Street was a very under-valued place that lacked both colour and nature. Therefore, the origami plant holder was a gift designed to bring natural elements such as flowers to the High Street, which could be taken home by the public.
Oliwia Malanowic, Interior Design | The themes I investigated were the Connections, Movement, Routes and Ways. My gift explores those themes through a figurative expression hidden within the structure of the dreamcatcher, allowing for a flexible interpretation by the audience, and to aid the imagination.
The structure of the dreamcatcher symbolizes the relationship between the destination and the journey the user undertakes, but while it highlights the importance of the destination, placing it in the centre as the biggest piece, it emphasizes the significance of the journey over the destination in the ratio of one big element vs many small elements.
This can be relevant to the High Street, if the connections are thought of beyond the transport means, and can relate to anything from the layout of the landscape of the High Street, to the interactions between the users.
The web symbolizes the connections between the pieces, plotting the blue foam pieces around the different lengths of the thread, off the centre where the destination piece is plotted. This is meant to show how the connections can be made in various ways and that there is no set order or pattern, meaning that the movement is individual and the connections are adaptable.
The blue foam pieces can be viewed as points or highlights of the journey, or they can represent different ways of getting to, and from the centre, suggesting that the journey doesn’t end with the destination.
Another way in which the web can be interpreted is that the small foam pieces are the destinations, the thread is the connection between them and the big piece symbolizes the decision making.
Rebecca Lisney, Landscape Architecture | For Colab Dudley, I baked a model that ties into the final proposal. Food is a huge part of history and culture and part of Dudley’s history and culture is using what food there is available. Bread is cheap and easy to make, so is found in many traditional black country dishes. I foraged for edible plants in my garden and neighbourhood and built hanging baskets and islands to show in an abstract way how public space could be more productive and beautiful. They were a tasty treat and a sustainable model!
Safiah Gordon, Interior Design | My gift focused on the issue that I found most prevalent in my research, which was the lack of nightlife and social entertainment on Dudley High Street. I created an abstract storyboard that highlights the gap on the High Street. This model can be packed away and used at different events. It can also be used as a puppet show. People can add their own contributions to the High Street. The storyboard was made out of recycled materials. This puts emphasis on looking after our environment.
Siddesh Gavali, Architecture | The Gift represents the two different typologies of building and its facade located on the High Street. One resembles St. Thomas Top Church and the other is the common modern building facade. The design of High Street buildings has evolved throughout the period. Its use, materiality, construction technique etc.
The High Street has always represented a role as a commercial and social hub. The concentration of public on the High Street provides the opportunities to designers to showcase creativity and innovation in design which impacts on visitors. We can say in other words, an ‘Exhibition’ of evolution of buildings in a row. So, facade plays a key role as it reflects the local identity of the town and its culture. So I did a little experiment to understand the street in the form of juxtaposition of facade by placing two different typologies of buildings located on the street. The voids on the facade have changed and adapted to more convenient rectilinear shapes during the past few decades.
The model made of plain paper can represent the periodical difference in buildings to which people of the High Street can easily relate and take a place within their memory.
Sita Patel, Architecture | This gift was created to highlight different points in the social spaces on the high street. Aspects that we can improve on and celebrate. One point found was to incorporate more green spaces to improve health and wellbeing. The other to celebrate the textures and embossings in Dudley’s early ironworking. These ornaments were created by melting sweets and printing patterns onto them.
Gratitude
“Gratitude is so much more than a polite thank you. It is the thread that connects us in a deep relationship, simultaneously physical and spiritual, as our bodies are fed and spirits nourished by the sense of belonging, which is the most vital of foods. Gratitude creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you have what you need. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver.” Robin Wall Kimmerer
Ways in which the gifts manifest and walk the walk of the CoLab Dudley principles
We chatted with the students and shared our notes with them about how wonderfully their gifts manifest our lab principles. These are the notes we added to their miro board.
Connections matter principle | The gifts focus upon how to invite or reveal connections. These are connections between people; between people and the High Street past, present, future; between people and nature/the more than human; the connection between the people on the High Street and the changing style of architecture/ built environment; the gifts also reflect upon practical considerations for enabling a slower and more convivial social space and so the conditions for connection e.g. rain coverings, green infrastructure, or how to travel there more easily.
Join the Dots principle | The gifts join the dots by manifesting: the link between sociality and movement on the High Street and affordable and multiple transport systems; the link between the High Street (hidden) histories and sense of place and Dudley people’s identity; the complex relationships between the (lack of) health of the High Street and the (declining/ relatively poor) health and prosperity of some local people; the links between the High Street/ urban dwellings as home to people and urban dwellings as places wildlife occupies; the relationship between the sociality /movement on the High Street and the weather; the relationship between the social purpose of the High Street and food; the relationship between the High Street health and proximity of green spaces as seen in the 3D map.
Design and build creative spaces and experiences together principle | A number of the gifts enable the revealing and discovering of the High Street through: play and joy, but also the giftees’ agency to complete the gift themselves e.g. the kaleidoscope; the draughts game; the jigsaw; the treasure hunt; where the High Street is framed as an exhibition spaces with contrasting facades of top church and trident centre it invites a different creative civic purpose; encouraging the interaction with the gift via all our senses such as the smell and taste of the bread with foraged herbs hanging basket or the interactive storyboard making of day and night time economy.
Create the conditions for curiosity and experimentation principle | The gifts invite more open ended questions about how to navigate the High Street and who is the High Street for via physical metaphors like: the dreamcatcher; and the melted sweets; the cardboard bear; the bread/ herbs mobile; the transparent rose enclosure indicating lack of green space the enclosed feeling of the High Street and how that might be opened up and biodiversity increased; or the 3D map of CoLab in relationship to the green spaces near us; encouraging the use of multiple senses and experiential gifts.
Use nature’s guidebook principle | Earth care is manifest via the prominence of recycled or foraged materials in the construction of the gifts e.g. the recycled plant holders; prioritising the need for green space and nature/ biodiversity to be designed back into the future High Street for human and more than human health, also via the sharing of growing, sharing local foods; High St as a shared habitat for us and nature; gifts themselves are an act of abundance, also a prominent lesson from nature.
Encourage abundance thinking and practice principle | The gifts embrace what is there already: hidden beauty and histories (or perhaps stories). This is seen in the multiple facade exhibition space that embraces the range of built environment designs present on the High Street; the treasure hunt of hidden historically important places; and the beauty in the metalwork referenced in the sweets.
Process of gift giving and lab principles
The gift process itself animates a range of lab principles as it is an act of encouraging abundance; it celebrates a diversity of gifts and skills; as well as being a manifestation of learn and test through doing and prototyping; and ultimately the design of the gift into the module is about inviting a different ways of behaving and thinking about the High Street that borrows from indigenous cultures of gift giving that invites stronger bonds between people, people and places. Gifting uses nature’s guidebook via the practice of abundance that is inherent in gifting rather than selling/ hoarding which is typical of our business as usual ways of organising or interacting on the High Street. Introducing the students to gift economies is a way of being a good ancestor.
Gratitude and Connections to the High Street and other Time Rebels
We discussed with the students how we would like to show our gratitude for these gifts and bring them into relationship with the wider constellation of Time Rebels and indeed to the people on the High Street. We have discussed a range of ways to do that including:
- an exhibition on the Virtual High Street;
- including the students’ gifts in this lab note;
- sharing our gratitude and links to our principles on their miro board;
- sharing the video of their gift summary with the other Time Rebels and feeding back any responses;
- printing the gifts and sending them to other Time Rebels;
- printing and exhibiting the gifts in the lab window on the High Street.
Next Step in the Journey…
Now the students are imagining resilient regenerative futures for the High Street. They will be using the imagination sundial to develop design ideas across scales for Dudley High Street of 2031, and guided by regenerative design principles to explore focused interventions and adaptations.
