City of London

Where Community Shapes Development

CLIENT

AXA IM

People often think of the Square Mile as just huge glass buildings and men in suits, without anything that could be called a real community. Working with AXA IM to inform the design, social value, and cultural offer of a portfolio of commercial developments, we set out to challenge this misconception.

Finding genuine, meaningful, and creative ways to reach into the many different resident, working, and visiting communities that make up the City of London, we created platforms to amplify the voices and opinions of people affected by the City’s future development—supporting their right to have an active voice in its evolution.

Working hand in hand with local community organisations, artists, corporations, schools, professional networks, and many more, we implemented a consultation programme that created paid opportunities for local people while delivering tailored interventions designed to remove barriers to involvement.

From reportage drawing in street markets to micro-artist residencies in the lobbies of commercial buildings, shadow puppetry workshops with youth groups, school visits, live scribe lunches with City workers, Drink (Tea) and Draw with community groups, and one-to-one interviews, we worked alongside hard-to-reach communities. This built a detailed evidence base of community needs that goes far beyond what is usually understood or known about the City, forming the basis of community, cultural, and social value plans for new developments.

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I run Babes in Development, an incubator and third space for black women. I have had an amazing experience working with Things Made Public. Both our organisations have alignment in values, especially around accessibility, diversity and inclusion so it seemed a perfect fit for us to collaborate to produce a zine and an architectural roundtable to help find innovative and thought provoking ways the CIty could be doing better to serve as wide a community as possible. Things Made Public have supported our community by providing us with opportunities to earn an income which has gone back into the work we do, as well as introducing us to amazing people.

– Marissa Mireles Hinds, Co-Founder of Babes in Development

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