Site Description: St.Luke’s community centre has a
collection of small allotments and some leftover space behind the
building for growing.
Storytelling: ‘I don’t exactly think Tesco’s are going to be
quaking in their boots, that we’re all going to be living the good
life anytime soon, but it’s more about the process, it’s about
supplementing what you’re eating, it’s about the calming nature of
it, soothing. Its about the investment, rather than just nipping
down the shops every night after work to buy a bag of lettuce, you
just nip out the back of your house and pick something up that
you’ve seen grow and fought the slugs off of for weeks, and you
really feel like you’ve earned it. So there’s lots of reasons for
doing it, and obviously the education and people knowing where it
comes from and the fascinating processes that get it there can’t
hurt. So I don’t think it’s a case of living off a window box, but
there’s so many other benefits, especially in difficult economic
times, I would imagine.’ (Participant C)
Opportunities: Willing and engaged individuals, a large
outdoor space, and an excellent site manager and initiative,
St.Luke’s also has good links to IT centre for workshops.
Challenges: To divide the small space vertically, to enhance
a community spirit, introduce more basic growing skills, to
encourage younger people to use the centre.
The Aims: To develop a scheme with a larger group of people
to add to the allotment site, introducing vertical growing frames
and environmental monitoring.
Intervention:
Large scale outdoor vertical growing
Background Research & Expertise: Vertical growing
Dream scenario: ‘to keep this as a centre where we can offer
training and support for people, and I suppose, develop a bit of a
nursery bed, but also try to get people doing it a bit nearer to
where they live.’ (Participant 0)
Key insights/ inspirational triggers for design: ‘because a
lot of the people that I work with in this area don’t have any
outside space, or very little outside space, and there is actually
very little opportunity for planting in the ground, I suppose I’m
always trying to learn ways of making the use of small terraces,
balconies.’ (Participant 0)
See our photo journal for St Lukes Community Centre
on Flickr here!
