Learning from We Make Our City

As our first in-person event since Covid-19, our hopes for We Make Our City were to:

• Help to create a feeling of kindness and connection in the city
• Create a space for people to come together after so much isolation, and to do so safely and in a way that everyone felt comfortable with
• Put a human and friendly face to Wolverhampton for Everyone and be able to potentially deepen and widen our network
• Show people how many small actions together can create a bigger impact

Within one week, the Mander Centre Community Hub was brought alive with:

• A public living room where people can relax, chat, and look out for each other
• Bunting making
• Family yoga
• Messy paint and play
• Creation of a pop-up art gallery
• Street Wisdom, wandering to gain wisdom from the streets of Wolverhampton
• Digital skills workshop
• Traditional Chinese exercise of Five Animal Qigong
• Sharing stories and songs, learning about Jamaican folklore
• Play café
• Street Activators discussion about how we can work together, with others on our streets and in our neighbourhoods to run activities and help create a kinder and better connected City.
• wcrfm broadcasting live
• A youth lab asking young people what type of city they want in the future (more things to do as a family, more craft activities, more parks with zip wires, green spread throughout Wolverhampton, more dedicated natural spaces, rewilding places for all kinds of life, trans-inclusivity from the city and its services)
• A growing workshop where people planted seeds to take home and grow for a simple salad or herbal tea
• Clothes and books share station
• Co-working opportunities, as people brought their meetings to the hub
• Camarados

During We Make Our City, Wulfrunians shared their experiences of their visits through a detectorism journal (adapted from our sister lab CoLab Dudley’s inspiring Do Fest Detectorism Journal) centred around three areas:

• Our relationship with Wolverhampton
• Experiences of We Make Our City
• Future imaginaries of Wolverhampton

“Detectorism is a made up word that encourages people to do the learning side of doing without being scared or switching off from research. It is… a form of continuous learning. It is a way of being curious in the world, paying attention to patterns at a range of scales, and experimenting with ways to reveal our collective insights (or what we call treasures) to inform our designs and actions. We capture detectorism treasure and feed it back into the learning and design process.” CoLab Dudley

Our Relationship with Wolverhampton

People shared that Wolverhampton is a diverse, creative and interactive place to live and work. It’s a beautiful city, but some people feel socially disconnected from people and physically disconnected from closed spaces.

We asked ‘How do you shape Wolverhampton?’ Some people struggled with this concept; that they could, or had permission to, shape their city. They fell into the service provision mindset by identifying things they would like to see provided for them in the city. On reflection, we could have perhaps asked ‘What if you could shape Wolverhampton?’

The Street Wisdom session sought to connect locals with their city, and unlock inspiration. Above eye level, beautiful and ornamental buildings told a story of a thriving economic past. Below this grandeur, participants felt empty, plastic units reflect people’s perceptions of the present that Wolverhampton has gone downhill. This led people looking at empty units and imagining alternative futures with ‘what if’ questions.

Experiences of We Make Our City

Throughout the week, we invited people to use their senses to share their experiences during We Make Our City. They could see peace, exercise, and people concentrating and thinking about what their future could be like. They could hear young people talking to each other, and smell coffee. They felt it was relaxed, engaging, friendly and enjoyable.

I feel hopeful that [young people] are our future — proud we have young people in the city to take Wolverhampton forward and stronger as a great place to live.

The week left people feeling curious about how people feel re-emerging after lockdowns, how people could be more social, and how young people can stay connected and be inspired to take their ideas forward.

They thought the activities of the week could help future generations by connecting people, and reducing social isolation, and inspire people to become active and imaginative.

The WE team also reflected on experiences of the week using our principles and referring back to what we had planned on our design canvas. Our principles guide us to our aim of co-creating a people-powered city in a way that encourages us to learn and reflect on how we are applying the principles in our everyday actions and what we are noticing as a result of this so we can adapt and respond to emerging themes and ideas.

Open, inclusive and inviting

When we entered the space, we had a completely blank canvas. Over the week, Wulfrunians gradually made it their own.

We found that being somewhere unexpected aroused the curiosity of passersby. The location in a shopping centre perhaps helped people feel they have more permission to enter the space, as opposed to off the street, although some people were still hesitant to venture into the unknown and join in. We felt that the footfall was generally lower in that part of the centre.

Quite a few people wandered in for help with their phones, for information they couldn’t access as they didn’t have an internet connection, or just to talk. Being welcomed and listened to led to a few people making return visits to talk and join in with activities. One person returned to share their gratitude, and another person left after a conversation saying ‘this has been the highlight of my week’.

Questions we now have:

• What if we had a space on a busy street with visibility and connection to passersby and the city?
• How might we shift service provision mindsets to agency?

Encourage abundance

We set out to support our city ecosystem and were overwhelmed with the abundance in our network:

• YMCA, opposite us in the Mander Centre, offered to lend us their furniture for the Public Living Room. Staff also joined in through the week, including giving a poetry reading.
• K-Tea Cakes made Wolverhampton for Everyone themed cupcakes
• Tony’s Deli kept everyone refreshed with tea and coffee with 26 cups of tea and 50 cups of coffee in total!

We also discovered the potential of abundance in Wolverhampton. Street Wisdom drew our attention to forgotten spaces, and left us with the question:

• What if we contacted landowners, and offered to bring these empty spaces to life with resources available in our ecosystem?

Celebrate gifts and talents

Lots of people came forward from our network to share their gifts and talents throughout the week. We reconnected with people who had wanted to prototype activities at We Make Our City 2020, people who had already been involved in WE activities or the network. We Make Our City provided a space for people who don’t usually have access to a space to run their projects or activities and some of them have connected with each other because of this.

Kristina Hall prototyped a Messy Paint and Play activity to bring her closer to her artistic practice. Another artist, Rachel Shakespeare, spent a couple of days supporting us and curated a gallery of the children’s paintings next to the window, which became an invitation for others to shape a blank canvas of a space into a collaborative and creative space.

An online bunting workshop was hosted for those who were still housebound, or who didn’t yet feel safe in public spaces. Materials were posted, and bunting was made together via Zoom. The bunting created was then gifted to decorate the We Make Our City space. One participant who couldn’t attend the online workshop created her bunting at another time and gifted it to WE. This was followed by a face-to-face bunting workshop at We Make Our City. One child who took part, took his bunting home to gift to his mum.

Questions we now have:

• How might we celebrate these talents in the future?
• How might we create more opportunities for people to gift to others?

Be curious and innovative

We realised that we usually focus on adults activating things, but we re-discovered the power of children exploring their curiosity that in turn helps adults feel at ease with using their imaginations. Qigong started with adults concerned about getting it right until children were drawn to the activity and led to cross-generational play.

Questions we now have:

• How might we create conditions for curiosity?
• How might we invite people to ‘do’ while imagining the future and their role within it?

Be mindful of environmental impact

Gatis Community Space curated a sharing economy area, where people could exchange clothes and books. We noticed a distinct change in people’s opinions towards sharing things and having a lighter impact on the earth.

Questions we now have:

• What more work do we need to do here to normalise sharing our resources and assets?
• How might our principle be reworded to encourage regenerative behaviours towards healing rather than doing less harm to our environment?

​​Foster authentic connections

We noticed that when an activity was on offer, people felt more comfortable talking to each other so eventually the activity came second to the conversation. We heard deep and meaningful conversations between people, with even shy people on the edges joining in.

Conversations at We Make Our City created numerous connections and ripples:

• New volunteers signed up to help create share economy activities as part of Gatis’ Wolves Waste Not.
• Through WE Make Our City, one activator built up their confidence and connected with Gatis to offer a session there.
• Gatis connected with Camerados, and as a result a public living room has now started at Gatis as part of their share economy events on a regular basis with a view to creating street activator public living rooms on the street.
• Another participant connected with Gatis and is looking to start a Fermenting Friends group to share knowledge and skills.
• A visitor is now volunteering on a daily basis at Gatis. They had become socially isolated but connecting with people and ideas at We Make Our City has already led to positive changes in their life.

Questions we now have:

• How might we capture these ripples, and revisit them to explore other outcomes and signals?
• How might we nurture our networks and relationships for the future?

Nurture learning and doing

People who ran activities (activators) were enthused with our aims to make connections and the idea of being curious to try new things in the city. We had reservations about co-creating We Make Our City in such a short period of time, but it helped to show others that they could do it too. Activators shared the opinion that if people don’t try and do these things, nothing will change.

We intended to create a safe space for people to prototype their ideas and give them confidence to do more. Activities like the public living room and swapping station also led to people talking about taking similar ideas on. By showing through doing, perhaps others felt they had permission to do the same.

Questions we now have:

• There is a resilient mentality from proactive people- how might we further nurture safe spaces so people feel supported to try out their ideas?

Work and share openly

We Make our City was a result of various people in our ecosystem coming together in a short period of time and experimenting together, working out loud. It was a way of showing people how small actions can create wider and cumulative impacts.

People embraced what we’re trying to do; there was a warmth towards our aim to nurture a people-powered city. We observed the importance of just sitting and listening to people and gently introducing new ideas. Quite often people are already aware but lack the confidence to find out more.

Questions we now have:

• How might we make our ways of working easier to understand and inviting?

Future imaginaries of Wolverhampton

Similar to our RE:IMAGINE gathering, the Youth Lab asked people to imagine they had travelled to the future and to share what they saw in Wolverhampton in 2031.

They could hear gentle music, water fountains and conversation, with no vehicle noise.

They could see flowers, bright spaces, and colourful art outside shops and cafes. The city was clean and full of trees and plants. They saw places where people could talk to each other and play together, with fun drawings on the pavements. There were local services such as shops, leisure areas and open spaces all within walking distance of people’s homes.

They could smell flowers, coffee and sun cream.

They felt curious about community engagement, social connections, and how we can ‘encourage our fellow Wulfrunians to follow their talents, dreams and innovative ideas to make Wolverhampton a great place to live and work.’

They wanted to tell people in 2021 that Covid was a learning time, that the future is joyful, and that there are opportunities for everyone to thrive.

“Everyone has opportunities to share their individual talents, experiences and time to support, encourage and care for our fellow Wulfrunians.”

The Wolverhampton for Everyone team found the WE Make our City residency a brilliant learning opportunity and we enjoyed the camaraderie between us — an important antidote to the months spent in Zoom meetings. We learnt more about how we work well together and how we have the capacity to create welcoming invitations and nurturing environments.