Spaces of HOPE. The Hidden History of Community Led Planning in the UK

'Spaces of HOPE' will produce the first sustained history of community-led planning (CLP) in the UK documenting the diverse and previously hidden ways in which people have come together to care for the future of their local environments and exploring what their efforts mean for contemporary approaches to planning and participatory place-making.

2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the Skeffington Report which established public involvement in town planning, one of the first public services to embrace participation. Existing scholarship has tended to focus on how citizens have influenced the official processes this established. Alongside this formal system, however, runs a rich history of informal CLP, which has not been subject to systematic or sustained research.

Given the contemporary significance of community action around urban and environmental issues this gap severely limits the capacity to learn from the past about the role of citizens in planning.

Building on the strengths of a multidisciplinary team including planners, community artists and historians, the project will address this gap by realising three overarching objectives: Firstly, reflecting on the development of discourses and practices of CLP since 1969 in order to contribute to a critical historiography of planning. Secondly, revealing previously hidden histories of CLP, using co-creative methods to explore the lived experiences of those involved and the ways in which understandings of self, place and community have been shaped by their actions.

Thirdly, enlivening debates and generating dialogue between past and present by bringing these 'hidden' voices into conversation with contemporary practices of participatory place-making.

Documentary and archival research will bring together scattered and fragmentary sources, including the uncatalogued archives of our impact partner the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) and the personal collections of the individuals and groups involved, some of which are in danger of being lost if not captured soon. Case studies of local CLP initiatives will include the drawing up of 'People's Plans', the building of new communities, anti-redevelopment campaigns and the creation of innovative participatory planning approaches.

By combining arts-based, participatory methods such as memory walks and photo elicitation with oral history interviews and workshops we will explore narratives of participation and engender the sharing of memories within and across places.

The project will generate significant impact using the TCPA's extensive networks to spark dialogue between past and present. A project website, hosted by the Digital Humanities Institute but available through the TCPA site, will act as an interactive CLP 'exhibition', including timelines and downloadable maps, and a living archive of CLP stories and materials.

A series of workshops, short articles and presentations at practitioner events will be used to generate discussion and we will produce downloadable guides for local groups interested in researching CLP and on what policy-makers can learn from these histories of citizen action and participatory planning. A final, national workshop "Community-Led Planning: the Next Fifty Years" will promote collective discussions on the future of CLP.

In addition, we will make presentations to 3 international academic conferences and contribute 3 articles to high-quality academic journals across the fields of urban history, community development and planning. Finally, we will publish a monograph bringing case studies and oral histories together to explore the history of CLP in the UK.

Overall, the project aims to uncover previously hidden histories of this important form of local citizen action, exploring how grassroots, place-based activism has challenged development proposals, set out alternative visions for places and in the process reshaped communities, identities and citizens' relations with the local state.