Gathering Place: What’s next for the Castle and Eye of York/shire public spaces?
Over the summer we’ve been doing many different events talking about different aspects of what might make brilliant public open spaces in the Castle and Eye of York/shire. On Saturday (2-4pm) in the Drawing Out The Brief open analysis session we’ll be looking at all the post it notes, blogs and social media contributions to draw out a draft and working Open Brief for the area.
You don’t have to have any expertise to get involved or to have been to any of the My Castle Gateway events, all very welcome. Sign up here.
The draft Open Brief will then be published. We will then actively road test it with groups, through public events and social media discussion. We’ll then revise the Brief by early December for a final round of discussion. The final, published version will inform the designers when they start work on a plan for the area next Spring.
In Spring 2020 this plan will then be published and again tested through public events, specific meetings with different groups and social media.
What events and resources will we be drawing on?
Post It notes, social media and Flickr: Here is a link to our Flickr site. All the events have been documented there. All the post it notes have been tagged. This means we can see the emerging issues (for example – want to see what people are saying about trees? Go here, click on treescastlegateway and you’ll see…). We’ll use these clusters of themed responses at the workshop on Saturday and link to these clusters in the Open Brief so the basis for the brief is clear.
What events did you run?
All of our events can be browsed on our website. We developed events around a series of key themes generated by the first phase of My Castle Gateway and the overall Open Brief.
- Gathering Playfully, we generated discussion around play through spending time in different parks around York including the Designer Outlet and Rowntree Park.
- Gathering Green, we spoken with landscape architects and pondered the trees and planting in our public spaces.
- Gathering with Water, looking at the connections to the Foss and the Ouse but also how water brings to life public spaces.
- Gathering with Heritage has seen us taken down the prison cells, looking at graffiti left by people about to be transported and being behind the scenes at the York Castle Museum handling their amazing collections. As well as document the uses of the Eye of York/shire over the years, such as for the St George’s Day Parade and explore the history of the South African War Memorial.
- Gathering on the Move has included looking at mobility of all kinds in different parts of York, of disability access issues in general and cycling is used for wider mobility by people with mobility issues.
But we didn’t just do events – we went to where people already are…
We have also been going to spend time and explore the issues with different groups. We’ve done very informal drop ins at Red Tower, had a chat with young people at Door 84 and young artists based at According to McGee, met with York Liberal Jewish Community, had discussions with MySight, been to ward committees and done a Pecha Kucha with the Arts Barge.
We also used social media
Through sharing old photos and new ideas we generated discussion on social media all of which has been also added to flickr for tagging.
How to get involved
We’ll do an email out as soon as the draft Open Brief is ready as well as post on social media. If you are in a group and you’d like My Castle Gateway to road test the brief with you and your group let us know!
Keep in touch via Twitter or via My Castle Gateway Facebook page
Join the discussion on the My Castle Gateway Facebook group
Follow our project post its and photographs on Instagram and on Flickr.
Email: mycastlegateway@gmail.com
Join our mailing list.