Shaping Spaces to Foster Meaningful Connection
This is a write up of a Q&A Phillippa recently took part in with the Loneliness Lab team at Collectively to share the story of Her Barking.
What is Her Barking?
Her Barking is a women-led movement experimenting to collaboratively design and test low cost interventions to make streets and spaces feel safer in Barking Town Centre.
Why when did you start the project/ What made you start the project?
I set up the project in 2018 after reading a council report about the difference in the level of perception of crime and the reality of crime in the town centre. Women, older and disabled people made up the majority of people who didn’t feel safe after dark which came to a whopping 51% of the population!
I felt angry that in the modern western world women are ultimately not able to access social or learning opportunities as they felt too fearful to leave the house after dark. I wanted to explore if we could use a human centred design problem solving process and apply it to the built environment. I needed to get under the skin of these perceptions, find out key locations where people felt unsafe and understand if small scale, low cost interventions designed locally could affect any change in how people feel and the stories we tell ourselves about a place. I believe if people feel safer they’re more relaxed and open to connection and ultimately the potential community holds. It’s like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs — if you don’t feel safe then nothing else has a chance.
What is your favourite thing that has happened as a result of your project?
After a year of identifying areas, testing ideas and beginning to build a movement locally we received funding from The National Lottery Community Fund. This meant we could commission artist/architect Hanna Benihoud to lead the collaborative design of an installation for St Awdry’s Walk, a fairly undesirable alleyway with lots of footfall connecting hundreds of commuters to Barking station. Emerging from engagement and community based workshops we designed an uplifting canopy of colourful shapes and solar powered light up messages that has just been installed! It’s been really challenging to pull off, especially in terms of getting permission from landowners, managing a whole range of risk and delivering the whole thing in a short time scale on a tight budget, but it’s really exciting to see people smiling as they look at it and messaging to say how they feel happy that something is happening in the alleyway.
What have you learned since you started your project?
To unlock rich ideas, ask better questions. In other words, to begin a process of re-imagination in a space people need a hook that makes sense. For example, at one of our first collaborative design workshops I asked the women who use the alleyway to imagine they were holding a birthday party for their best friend in the space — what would they do with £50 and the local shops? The ideas that flowed from this were so exciting!
The bolder your ideas are, the more likely people are to support. I was nervous to ask our contact at the shopping centre and Network Rail if we could drill into their walls to put up the structure, but if you frame things in the right way, are confident in the value the idea brings and have thought things through, then I think most of the time people want to be behind you. Don’t let getting permission be the thing that stops you! And if you don’t get an answer two, three or four times of asking, just keep going — eventually you’ll find a way to track someone down who wants to help and your persistence will be rewarded!
Start by starting. This is an Urbanistas favourite but it’s always front and centre in our work at Street Space. Take a deep breath and just begin, people will get behind you, tell you what’s working and what’s not and you’ll soon figure out a way forward.
Go where the energy for change is. After the first prototyping for Her Barking we had four locations across the town centre, each space had a complex set of constraints to contend with but we decided to focus on the alleyway first as it’s where most of the energy for change was/is.
What reactions have you received from the public with the changes the project made?
People love the installation and this has acted as a catalyst for bringing forward loads of other great ideas about how next to reimagine the alleyway, which is fantastic and just what we’d hoped! People feel really excited that something’s happening in this unloved part of the town centre and the people who’ve been a part of the design process are really proud to have helped shape their own neighbourhood in a positive way.
We know people dread walking through the alley on a daily basis and many have witnessed or experienced traumatic events there, we hope the installation makes their walk through just a tiny bit better.
What’s next for the project?
We’re trying to find funding to undertake an independent study of the intervention to figure out what the impact really is — can collaboratively designed changes have an impact on how safe people feel, even if the change is quite small? Does the story about the alleyway change or spread locally? Are people feeling less afraid when they use the alley? Are they imagining other spaces as a result? Are they more willing to connect with people in the alleyway now?
If you had a magic wand, what one thing would you change about our cities to make them less lonely?
I’d make it the norm that residential streets are closed to traffic every Sunday for a couple of hours — whether people choose to use the time to plant, chat, play, party, swap, eat, sell or share things together, I think we’d all get out and start to connect with each other without the barrier of cars in the way.
Where is your favourite space to go when you are feeling lonely?
I like to be near water when I’m feeling sad or lonely, so probably walking along the nearest river or reservoir.
