Working with Communities
Staff and students in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape work with communities, through teaching and research as well as voluntary projects.
Diploma in Town Planning students work with Middlesbrough Council to identify a new Conservation Area
As part of the consultancy project which ran from September 2011-January 2012, Diploma in Town Planning students, Helen Bloomer, Patrycja Pikniczka, Ross Sandbach, Hannah Walker worked with Rachel Coar (Urban Regeneration Officer), Sally Childes and David Carruthers, (Conservation Officers) at Middlesbrough Council to appraise the area of Middlesbrough around and including Albert Park to determine whether it should become a Council approved conservation area. Their report is being used as part of the evidence to gain Council approval, and the area is likely to be designated a conservation area in the near future.
Rachel Coar of Middlesbrough Council said "The work submitted by the students was excellent. It is clear that the students have done a great deal of research, made numerous site visits, and had discussions with relevant groups and individuals. The argument for proposing the area for designation, as a conservation area is clear and convincing, based on a good methodology for assessing significance. Therefore the document produced will be invaluable in providing justification for designation of a new conservation area."
Guerilla Pavilion - working with the residents of Gateshead (North East of England)
Action Research is a project that focused on an unused grassed area in between three social housing blocks in Gateshead. Carried out by 4 post-graduate students in architecture (Mark Greenhalgh, Amy Linford, Cara Lund and Michael Simpson) within the frame of a Linked Research module, the project supports the research of their tutors Armelle Tardiveau and Daniel Mallo; it was funded by SPINDUS (a research project aiming at the development of practical and pedagogical planning and design methodologies to assess, evaluate and implement spatial quality) and the Engagement Fund at apl.
The project sought to engage the community of residents in answering the question of ‘whose outdoor space is it’ and in unearthing new meanings and uses. Articulated through asset-based community development methodologies, the project led to the temporary transformation of the space in order heighten, emphasise and highlight its quality. The Action Research team spent over 18 months engaging with a group of residents from the housing blocks sharing activities, such as tea parties and bingo sessions, in order to build trust, mobilise the community, stir dialogue through a collective experience and, ultimately, change the users’ perception and relation with the space.
These events were supported by props ranging in scale, from a tray containing a tea set and bingo prizes to a temporary pavilion that provided a clear delineation of space for activities on the grassed area. This light-weight structure built with 30x30mm rolled steel hollow sections, ratchet straps and LDPE plastic tubing was designed and built by the Action Research Team at the Architecture and Fine Arts workshops at Newcastle University following a process of material research and budget compliance. The pavilion underwent a process of structural test and of health & safety checks from both Newcastle University and The Gateshead Housing Company before housing a culminating event on the grass area of a glorious morning of November (2011). See Gateshead Action November 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukCvnVlK1jw
Student voluntary project in Uganda
The Wider Mbarara Project has been running for several years and involves a group of students from Newcastle University raising funds and travelling to Kichwamba, Uganda in order to build housing for an AIDS orphanage for the local area. All the money raised goes to the orphanage, the students fund their own travel and accommodation.
Kichwamba is a small town in the Mbarara district in Africa on the edge of a National Park and as with most of Uganda this is an area ravaged by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The children of the orphanage range in ages and the students, from Architecture, Planning and Civil Engineering, work and live on the site for a number of weeks each summer. Various community buildings have already been built in the master plan of the area, including a school and a hospital, and the most recent group worked on the accommodation, kitchen areas and play areas for the children.
For the last two years the students have given a presentation to interested staff and students and their sponsors Gradon Architecture, upon return and these can be viewed by clicking on the links below.
To view the student's presentation of their experiences in 2010 please click here. (PDF 3289KB)
Community Diet, Exercise and Well-being: the Value of Allotments - Tim Townshend's work with Moorside Allotments 
In recent decades the amount of space given over to food production in urban areas has been dwindling, with an overall decline in the number of allotment sites, urban farms and market gardens in the latter half of the 20th century. In the UK, figures show that 40% of allotments have been lost since 1970. Set against this allotments are increasingly popular and waiting lists for plots are often very long - although this is not the case in all parts of the country or across all parts of a city. Anecdotal evidence suggests that much of the new demand for plots is from young professionals, women and families, changing the image of allotments as a working-class, white and male preserve. Despite the demand, allotment sites are still at risk from development projects - and there has been much controversy about the impact of the London Olympic Games on Manor Garden Allotments in Hackney Wick, for example.
The aim of this project is to undertake a robust and in-depth look at the benefits of allotments on the day-to-day lives of those who have them and to explore their potential for society more generally. The key object is to highlight the need for planning policy to take into consideration the protection of existing allotments and to promote the development of new ones. As part of this research project Tim is working with the Moorside Allotment Association in Fenham, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Developing the Capacity to Reduce Destructive Neighbourhood Conflict
Since March 2009, Patsy Healey has been on the Management Group of the Newcastle Conflict Resolution Network (NCRN). Funded by the Newcastle Quaker Meeting and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, NCRN aims to help prevent, reduce and resolve actual or potential destructive conflict, and to support those involved in doing so. With her encouragement, NCRN recently commissioned a review (undertaken by former SAPL planning Masters' student, Jeff Corrighan) of what causes conflict in Newcastle's neighbourhoods. As a follow up, NCRN facilitated a meeting between practitioners and academics at Newcastle University's School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape. For further information on NCRN, and on the above review, see www.newcastlecrn.org.uk.
Urban Design links with the region
Georgia Giannopoulou's Urban Design students worked on redevelopment schemes for the Northumberland Town of Hexham in 2010. The students were invited by Hexham Civic Society on the back of the local council's plans to redesign the town's bus station. This gave the students a real-world design dilemma and a starting point for their own aspirational schemes. Georgia and the students were then invited to exhibit their designs in the town and present them to the local community. You can see photographs of the designs and the presentation event at our gallery pages.
In 2011 the Urban Design cohort worked on a Gateshead site with the assistance of Gateshead Council. The Tyne Bridge Tower site in Gateshead Quays was the subject of a redevelopment masterplan. The aspirational proposals drawn up by the students were then exhibited in Gateshead Council offices and the public were encouraged to feedback their comments. Georgia said:
"The MA in Urban Design at Newcastle University has always sought to and prided itself on engaging with real-life projects, which link the course firmly with the region, offer our expertise and place ourselves within our context, but also help the students to acquire invaluable experience of the reality of a process which has been tremendously beneficial to them in their search for employment and early professional careers".
Photographs of the exhibition can be seen at our gallery pages.