What we do
Find out more about our broad range of services.
What we do
Place wide cultural strategies
Taking a broad, rather than purely arts based notion of culture, these studies identify how cultural activity can play a role in the multifaceted business of urban regeneration and development, searching across arts, sports and environmental platforms to promote economic resilience, community well-being and environmental quality. As a study that cuts across all aspects of the delivery of sustainable places, they are a strategic tool and source document from which can spring innovative and original approaches to urban design, particularly those that attempt aggregation or a so-called ‘massive small’ methodology. Our studies ensure economic development recognises the core strengths of place and influence master-planning to promote social sustainability.
‘Meanwhile’ initiatives
Meanwhile initiatives involve the use of projects that sit at the intersection of creative expression, economic development and environmental improvement to restore value to sites that have been abandoned or are awaiting development. Plan Projects carries out appraisals of such sites to understand what form of activity would be appropriate given location, context and future uses and produces business plans that seek to balance the commercial potential with community need.
Cultural programming and event management
Plan Projects devises and manages tailored programmes of cultural activity as part of the delivery of regeneration and development. Our programmes are specifically designed to address the economic, social and environmental needs of place and, as a result, are diverse and multifaceted; they have included a variety of urban agriculture and horticulture projects, street art and sports events, festivals, public art strategies and workshops with creative practitioners designed to promote skills and routes to employment. Where urban design may deliver the ‘static’ aspects of place-making, the stage on which human dramas may be played out, we aim to stimulate the ‘kinetic’ – which optimises the cultural value of these places.
Development of Neighbourhood Plans
The government’s localism agenda has placed more power in the hands of local communities to influence development. By putting together a ‘neighbourhood plan’ a community can help determine key issues such as housing, employment sites and infrastructure. We have noted in our work that the closer planning gets to the neighbourhood level, the more ‘cultural’ it becomes, because it deals directly with the community’s hopes and aspirations. To be adopted by the local authority, however, neighbourhood plans need to be evidence based and robust; Plan can provide the professional support to communities who wish to take advantage of these new powers
Community Consultation
Plan Projects, through developing regeneration strategy for Local Planning Authorities and, more recently, experiments with the development of Neighbourhood Plans, has developed community consultation as a core skill. We offer community consultation programmes as a discrete service to developers as an integral aspect of the development process. As well as designing a place specific approach to community consultation, we deliver the programme and produce effective communication tools to demonstrate how these responses have influenced the proposed development. We seek not only to add value to development by creating an effective means by which local stakeholders’ views may be reflected in final development proposals but, for larger schemes, also satisfy the statutory duty to consult under the provision of the Localism Act.
Land bids and planning triumph
Our cultural strategies have been instrumental in winning both land bids and applications for outline planning consent. We have worked with clients right through these sometimes lengthy and complex processes to achieve consistently successful outcomes. In addition, our public art strategies have enabled developers to satisfy planning conditions relating to art within architecture and the public realm.