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Symposium Format & Delivery

learning by doing in real places

Delivering Better PlacesDesign Skills Symposium

Scotland 2011

Hosted by Architecture + Design Scotland, Stirling Council & Historic Scotland with support from Scottish Government Architecture & Place Division, Improvement Services, The Academy of Urbanism and the Key Agencies Group

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Sue Bruce’s statement goes to the heart of the purpose of what we do as professionals: impact on people’s lives.

The Design Skills Symposium is an interdisciplinary learning event focused on the creation of better ‘places’ for better lives. It is aimed at those who have an interest in and influence over the shaping of ‘place’. Its about impact.

To achieve better places spatial and non-spatial issues need to be taken into account. Making better places then is about vision, collaboration and aligning resources to make things happen.

The theme: ‘Delivering Better Places’

The theme of this year’s Symposium is ‘Delivering Better Places’, and is based on research carried out by University of Glasgow for Scottish Government, RICS and A+DS. The purpose of the research was to identify, through case studies, why (the rationale) and how (the process ) cities across Europe delivered great places. These places support environmentally friendly behaviours, social networks, new forms of economy, and creative use of infrastructure to mitigate climate change. They promote new forms of citizenship, of public and private partnerships. The performance of the place, post occupation, in all instances is excellent. They work as ‘people places’.

In each case study, a ‘whole place’ approach was adopted. In broad terms, this brought together two dynamics: ‘market making’ and the process of ‘placemaking’. ‘Delivering Better Places’ identifies 5 key stages necessary to bring these processes together. They are:-

• Anticipation - being clear on the concept for the place, and why

• Initiation - projects that will kick start the process of making the concept ‘real’

• Design - turning the concept into physical form and service delivery proposals

• Implementation - processes supporting how the place is built and

• Stewardship - long term maintenance and management necessary to grow place value over time.

Each concept needs to tell a story about how the idea for that place will be delivered. The five stages above will be used as a framework for testing the deliverability of concepts developed by participants during the Design Skills Symposium.

Testing will be undertaken through peer review [learning from each other], expert feedback [industry view] and design review.

Design Skills Symposium Scotland 2011The Tolbooth, Stirling. 27-29 September

“Are you planning or saving lives?

Sue Bruce OBE

Particpants at work in a workshop session at the 2010 Design Skills Symposium

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A first class programme in terms of content, presentation and facilitation - I would strongly recommend attendance.

DSS2010 delegate

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Understanding Placemaking

Better placemaking is about making better use of the resources and assets in a particular place to enable better lives. It is about ensuring that the opportunities and challenges of a place can be addressed in a joined up way. Achieving this means interdisciplinary working: bringing all the people with an interest and influence on the shape and function of a place together and working things through. This is the scope of the Design Skills Symposium: participation, collaboration and pragmatism.

Getting to grips with ‘design’

As well as providing the opportunity to engage with ideas on ‘place’ and placemaking, The Design Skills Symposium promotes the use of ‘design thinking’ to identify challenges and and develop solutions for our places. Design thinking is a process of creative problem solving, - it’s about making ideas about placemaking tangible and workable. Gordon Cullen suggests that towns, cities and places are about understanding the ‘art of relationships’. Design is about enhancing the relationship between people and place and considering the social components of ‘place’; it’s about creating sustainable and well-integrated solutions and it’s a way to innovate.

The skills symposium will be based on gaining a robust understanding the issues connected to a place (Stirling) and exploring solutions through conversation, developing concepts, and testing these against various constraints

Objectives of the Design Skills Symposium

The overall aim of the Symposium is to provide an opportunity where the various people involved in creating and delivering better places in Scotland can come together, build confidence and improve practice in the field. On this basis, the objectives of the Symposium are to:

• enable participants to learn from each other, share knowledge and best practice in the use of ‘place’ as a means of achieving better outcomes for people,

• equip participants with the skills to negotiate with and influence colleagues, communities and stakeholders in the shaping of decisions to achieve a range of better outcomes for the ‘place’

• promote rapid idea development through design thinking and collaborative working as a means of identifying the qualities and criteria to guide decisionmaking on the shaping of places

• develop participant skills and capabilities in robustly testing and defending propositions through management of unexpected change, design development and critique

• build a resource base to support participants in applying the knowledge and skills gained at the Symposium back in the field through their own practice

...those charged with delivery need to engage with both making markets and placeshaping strategies

Delivering Better Places in Scotland

Design Skills Symposium Scotland 2011The Tolbooth, Stirling. 27-29 September

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“ Outcomes

At the end of the Symposium, participants will:

• have a resource of knowledge on best practice and current thinking in local economics, development and infrastructure delivery, the relationship between delivery of public services and the design of the built environment, the role of networks in pulling places together, behaviour changes to achieve climate change objectives and international case studies

• have a set of skills and attributes in learning from place, design thinking, influencing, negotiation, concept change management, critique, group working and presentation. These attributes will form resources to apply to the practical processes of briefing, plan development, masterplanning, service design, development management, feasibility, and investment

• have the confidence and support necessary to test the knowledge gained in the field; to act as agents of change in the culture of their own organisations and practice; to have a network of ongoing support and feedback to discuss what works, what doesn’t and how things can be improved

Format of the Symposium

The Symposium is a two and a half day event. A series of learning and teaching methods will be used throughout the Symposium to achieve the objectives and outcomes. Diagram 1 summarises the methods applied across the duration of the Symposium.

Day 1 takes the form of a half day conference, which will share knowledge on current best practice, and identify the issues and challenges to delivering better places. This knowledge will be gathered through group working, with workshops focusing on Developing ideas for three sites in Stirling, which are representative of typical conditions in Scottish settlements:

• how to creatively re-think the purpose of existing town centres • how to re-think existing large scale transport infrastructure within

neighbourhoods and settlements • how to creatively think about developing new place concepts for

constrained and brownfield lands within settlements.

The output of Day 1 will inform briefing for the workshop sessions in the following two days.

Day 2 of the Symposium takes the form of expert seminars on current thinking, workshop sessions and proposition testing by an expert panel. The purpose of the day is to promote collaborative working as a way of generating place concepts.

Design Skills Symposium Scotland 2011The Tolbooth, Stirling. 27-29 September

The purpose of DSS2011 is to build confidence and practical skills in Delivering Better Places

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Additional support from: SNH, SEPA, Scottish Water, Transport Scotland, Royal Town Planning Instiute, Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, Urban Design Group, Chartered Institute of Highways & Transport

Event hosted by :

With support from :

The output of Day 2 will be a set of propositions to meet issues in the brief, supported by a key diagram.

Day 3 of the Symposium takes the form of an international masterclass, followed by design development workshops and design review. The purpose of the day is to promote creativity and innovation in translating place concepts into deliverable proposals.

The output of Day 3 will be a set of drawings and supporting delivery narrative which explain the key structure and qualities of the proposal, how it works, how it will be delivered and what effects it will generate. Outputs

Following the Symposium, a series of outputs will be made available to assist and disseminate learning:

• Presentations from each day will be loaded up on the Design Skills Symposium website.

• Video recordings of the presentations will be loaded up soon after the event.

• Learning packs, providing a resource to participants to deliver a seminar on themes from the Symposium back in their own work will also be provided after the event.

• Daily blogs and tweets of the key issues from each day of the Symposium will be posted up to share the thinking with a wider audience, and act as an aide memoire to participants.

• A web based forum will be available to participants to carry on conversations and share learning after the event.

All the outputs prepared by the delegates will be gathered together to inform the development of a set of reports on the Symposium proceedings. The reports will address [a] the themes of place, design, and delivery, [b]the processes of collaborative working used by the participants to develop and test initial propositions and [c] the processes of creative and innovative design thinking used by delegates to develop and test detailed proposals.

A feedback report from the event will also be prepared to inform improvements to the programme and event organisation in future years.

In winter 2011/12, there will be a follow up web based seminar on themes from the Symposium. The purpose of the seminar is to [a] re-connect with participants, [b] share knowledge on the reports generated from the Symposium, [c] gather feedback, and provide support on what has worked and what hasn’t when delegates applied the learning from the Symposium event back in the field.

Design Skills Symposium Scotland 2011The Tolbooth, Stirling. 27-29 September

It was great to talk to so many other people who were just as keen to improve their skills to make Scotland more sustainable

DSS2010 delegate

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