Working with the City

Grand Union is committed to a considerate and collaborative approach to urban regeneration. We recognise that to create an urban environment that is welcome, inclusive and supportive for everyone, we need to create many opportunities for community-led planning.

Junction Works

A landscape image of a pale brown hand wearing several bracelets and silver rings holds a small red-pink reddish above a table made of dark brown branches. Upon the table there is a variety of plants and fruits such as apples and flowers.

The Growing Project

Digbeth Access Group

A landscape image of two people, turned towards each other as if in conversation, stood behind a trestle table covered in papers and documents. Behind the two figures is a grey wall with large posters evenly spaced scross it. The posters are dense with written and visual information, and look like museum information boards.

Histories of Women’s Place-making in Birmingham

A landscape image of a large screen within a darkened gallery space. The screen shows a brightly coloured animation of a varied group of people holding placards bearing slogans such as ‘Together is Better, know your rights’, ‘Repair don’t Demolish’, and ‘Housing is a human right.’ Atop the image, large yellow words read; ‘A Bedroom for Everyone’ in capital letters on the diagonal across the screen.

Ed Webb-Ingall

A landscape image of a smiling woman with dark brown skin, sitting outside in front of a blue shed-like structure with red details. Next to the woman sits another person, dressed in black, who is also smiling. Other figures are standing in the background, slightly out of focus.

‘Now Here’ with May Robson

Often planning processes are driven by economic development. Socially-led place making is part of the regeneration ideology, however, decisions are usually made based upon growth economics rather than community need. We have found in our work that place-making strategies often impose idealist views upon a location, using the vision of a developer, or a local authority planning team, rather than growing and building from an existing community, from the ground up.

As a result we are questioning the ways that city infrastructure is developed, asking ourselves; What would it be like to create a plan for living, based upon the needs of a community? What if this was the driver for change, rather than extracting the highest monetary value from land? What if we recognise that the current status quo is not working and we ask artists to be part of a collaborative approach that can find alternative solutions? What would it be like to design and build from a place that acknowledged suffering, and was trauma informed? What if we asked the people who have been made most vulnerable to be an integral part of the design process? What would it be to create a system that was truly regenerative and not exhaustive? What if we could create spaces that benefited everyone, not just the few?

A square image of a group of people walking along the canal side, towards a low bridge covered in bright, colourful graffiti. AT the centre of the image, a tall person with long black locs and their back to the camera carries a white metal table support, two shorter figures walk slightly in front. On top of the bridge, another group of people are crossing the canal.

We want to see consultation, discourse and development methods that engage with communities in a less tokenistic way, ensuring that more people are not only listened to, but have agency in the planning that directly impacts them. We want to see community-led organising and activism brought to the fore, not hidden and forgotten.

Grand Union’s programmes aim to ask these questions in different ways, from the theoretical to on the ground live projects. The whole programme considers how people have developed their own proposals for land-use; owning, occupying and developing sites, and most importantly creating communities, together.

A landscape image of bunches of leaves and plants hanging from a wooden frame to dry.