James Newton - What does radical change look like?
The Fifth Sacred Thing by Jessica Perlstein
Turns out that it’s not a straight forward process to put down into words a vision for a pioneering sustainable neighbourhood led by a collective of passionate local people from different backgrounds with a variety of perspectives… who knew, eh? This is what we attempted to do online on 30th April and here’s what happened.
Setting the Scene
James Newton and Imelda Havers led a workshop that aimed to both report back on progress so far with the YoCo project since being granted seed funding from Community Led Homes and bring people together to start to shape the project’s collective brief. Starting with a summary of “where we’re up to” we revisited where the concept of a York Central Co-owned neighbourhood was born and the groundwork carried out during the My York Central series of workshops in establishing 8 Big Ideas. This helped set the scene and set the basis for the next phase of work going forward in shaping the ideas and structure for YoCo.
Simon Sinak - Start with Why?
Scope of work
The scope of the the Start up fund grant received was introduced; the pot is for “early stage voluntary and community organisations exploring community led housing” and so has given the project a small budget to develop and explore options to bring forward community led solutions to York Central. A large part of the funding will help fund a series of workshops to help shape they why, the how and the what we’re going to do with YoCo and by the end of this phase of work we’ll aim to have:
An agreed vision and clear outline of the project
Agreed what governance arrangements, legal and ownership structure we want
Good group development – basics in place including decision making processes, roles and responsibilities, etc..
Engagement and recruitment processes and policies, marketing plan and a digital presence
In the spirit of shaping the future through open conversations this workshop represented the first step in establishing the “why” by creating a shared vision for the project..
Our Purpose?
After introducing Coin Street Community Builders as a case study that outlined how having a very clear vision and values has helped their project thrive we moved on to reviewing the first bash at pulling together a set of vision, mission and aims for YoCo. These were presented and people we’re encouraged to comment, which sparked face to face discussion and lots of useful feedback in the chat box: utilising all aspects of the online meeting formats that we’re all becoming familiar with!
Here’s what we ran through:
Vision: Based in part of York Central, our vision is to bring together exciting, inspiring ideas to radically change the way we live as communities. We want to support a sustainable, inclusive home life which will set the standard for other urban developments in York.
Mission: We believe people are what makes a neighbourhood. Our mission is to bring people together, regardless of their background. We are a diverse mix of local people including architects, creative folk and entrepreneurs, working to address the deepest issues in modern living.
YoCo will lead the way in challenging unaffordable housing and inequality. It will provide spaces to live, work and spend leisure time by encouraging everybody to share their views. With residents at its heart, it will provide modern, green spaces to support a better quality of living.
Post it notes to capture key discussion points amongst the group
Notes to feed into next review of vision…
Aims: More than just a development, YoCo will build on new opportunities in York, including the ground-breaking My York Central project. By combining new ideas with public opinion, we will:
- Make housing affordable forever, offering viable alternatives to failing existing models.
- Create an inclusive, open public space, encouraging residents to enjoy them at their leisure, rather than feeling like consumers.
- Offer affordable, creative workspaces with flexible options to suit all needs.
- Encourage eco-friendly movement throughout the neighbourhood, offering accessible cycle lanes and walking areas with minimal traffic.
- Evolve our designs over time as we continue to exchange ideas.
More Post it notes to capture key discussion points amongst the group
Notes to feed into next review of Philosophy
Philosophy:
Live: Homes for living, not profit; Low carbon, high quality design; Forever affordable mix of rented and owned
Work: Collaboration is key: Inclusive hubs with multi-purpose offices, shared co-working areas scope for creativity
Play: Enjoy down time! Rest, recharge and rewild - creating an environment enhancing health & wellbeing
Next steps
After over an hour of lively discussion the general feel from the group was that this was a good starting point but that the vision needed more work to make it distinctive and clearly communicate how innovate we all felt the YoCo concept is… It was agreed that the conversation should continue and people volunteered to meet again and take these ideas that we captured into another online workshop to explore and refine a collective vision.
For those that couldn’t make it, here are a few links to some of the content generated for and during the session: