Together Culture Cambridge: Making Space to Connect, to Care, to Create and to Citizen
How do you decide what you make space for in your life? I suspect you prioritise space for whatever helps you to care for yourself and connect with others. Do you make space for activities (like exercise or meditation) that keep you healthy and happy? Do you make space for activities (like gardening or volunteering) that keep others healthy and happy? And how do your priorities inform how you use the space in your home? Maybe you installed an island in your kitchen where people gather and make memories as meals are being prepared. Maybe you’ve turned a spare room into a guest room so loved ones from far away can live under your roof, if only for a few days each year. Or, maybe you’ve installed solar panels because you want to do something about climate change and peace.
Our decisions about what we make space for reflects what we value and how we try to live our values. It is intimately connected to our identity and easy to understand on an individual level. Widening our lens a bit, how do decisions about how our public space is used reflect our values as a community? And how many of us are involved in making the decisions about the use of the space we share to reflect our values?
One cold Saturday in January, I found myself standing on the corner of Burleigh and Fitzroy Street with my Together Culture friends, a giant blackboard in the shape of a kite, and a conversation menu. With the Grafton Centre up for sale, we set out to discover what values our neighbours shared and how they would redevelop the space with those values in mind. We asked folks, ‘What would have changed in 10 years to make you so proud of The Kite that you believed it was the best place in the world to live?’ We were there to draw out people’s imagination through intentional conversation and doodles on a blackboard.
We spoke to about 75 people that day and what linked all their ideas was making space for connection, creativity, caring for others - for truly becoming a community. In their words they want; a place that lets us be creative because creativity makes us feel alive. A place where life is growing. A place where music hangs in the air. A place where children are cared for. A place where grandparents, GenZ’s, students, taxi drivers, and tech entrepreneurs mingle as they play ping pong and drink coffee and walk their dogs. A place where people are introduced to new ideas. A place where people try out new ways of being. A place where people explore new identities. A place where people talk to neighbours they don’t know. A place where people feel different is celebrated. A place where people feel they have a voice in changing the status quo. A place where people gather that is designed for thriving. A place that makes time.
What I heard from my neighbours (literally, I live around the corner) is that they want public space to be designed for people to make meaningful contributions. Space that enables us to use our time today in a way that matters for how others experience tomorrow. My neighbours were talking about space to ‘citizen’. Not to be a citizen (noun), but to actively, creatively, and with compassion, citizen (verb). We’re building Together Culture to address the desire of our neighbours to create public spaces where they can be more fully human.
There is an artist inside everyone!
Cambridge is an extraordinary marketplace of ideas and a global creative economy powerhouse - an inspirational place that I feel very lucky to call home. But, Cambridge limits her potential by excluding many of her citizens from participation in our creative economy and shaping our culture. How is it, in a place with so much prosperity, one in ten households earn less than £16k each year? That’s a systemic outcome that is undeniably cruel. It’s time to get busy recreating how we organise ourselves so the outcomes of our actions reflect the compassionate and collaborative values that guide our lives. Cambridge can become an exemplar of equitable, ecological, power-with culture.
Together Culture (a registered Community Interest Company) will be a cultural hub, at present most likely at the old NHS hospital in Papworth Everard, co-designed with the community, that exists to develop a more vibrant creative scene, a more inclusive creative economy, and to encourage more active citizenship by giving people space to care and be cared for. Afterall, the word citizen stems from the Latin for ‘together people’.
We aim to provide 200 affordable studios for artists and entrepreneurs. If we prioritise reshaping how we organise ourselves, it is acting on our values to put people who are hard wired to create at our centre. To inclusively recreate for collective wellbeing, Together Culture space will invite everyone to contribute. We’re designing community kitchens, community gardens, community energy projects, and spaces for movement, performance, talk and play. We’re delighted to be working with Ab Rogers’ Design to develop space for the art of care.
How we’ll use the space to create a more equitable and ecological community is what we call imagination infrastructure; the stuff that creates connection but we cannot see or touch as we can buildings and bridges. We’re planning to offer ‘How to Citizen’ workshops, events, and courses that help people to develop creative, collaborative, and decision making skills. Each year we’ll run a Citizen Studio (an incubator meets citizens assembly) to put skills into action to produce new projects and enterprises that address challenges and opportunities that arise from our community. We plan on investing £500,000 each year to develop prototypes to transition Citizen Studio plans into citizen actions.
One story I cannot shake from that January afternoon is Tom’s. Tom is a strapping bloke in his late thirties and when I walked up to him, I wasn’t sure he’d stop as he looked in a rush. Yet, Tom slowed when I asked, ‘Is there a story behind why you’re in The Kite today? I mean, why are you running errands here and not elsewhere?’ Tom was quiet for a few moments and then said, ‘the Charity Shops on Burleigh Street make me feel my mum is still with me. She passed away six months ago. She loved those shops. She thought every dress, every jacket had a story to tell of a life lived and provided a chance for the next owner to give a new story a whirl. Mum was a bright spark in my life - you can imagine with an attitude like that.’ Yes, Tom. I can. Then he shared a photo of his mum and her magnetic smile. Afterwards, he shyly asked, ‘Could I have a hug?’ And there, in the middle of the street, a stranger shared a bit of his grief and a bit of his love with another stranger.
If connection like this was what our public space was designed for, I think that going out would feel a lot more like coming home.
If you would like to be part of shaping Together Culture, you are welcome. Please register your interest at www.togetherculture.com.
