Year | 2019
Location | Walkley, Sheffield, United Kingdom
Client | Walkley Community Centre, Walkley Carnegie Library and Wider Walkley
Walkley Vision had three clients: Walkley Community Centre, Walkley Carnegie Library and the wider Walkley community. We were tasked with creating better connections between the various community assets, businesses and volunteers in the area as well as providing specific outcomes for our clients.
The Community Centre described their need for help with their volunteering network and the desperate need for better accessibility in both their building and the surrounding streets of Walkley. The Library was undergoing a transformation and its renovation would see business units added to their space to help generate income. The library staff voiced concerns about how their space will continue to function once the redevelopment is complete. Finally, local residents had provided detailed feedback for many years but had seen few of their suggestions come into fruition.
The brief was broad and wide ranging, so we produced a series of outputs appropriate for various scales and uses. Following extensive mapping and focused public engagement, we produced outcomes that promoted collaboration. Videos were a major tool for recording and promoting the vibrancy of Walkley and something that we had strong and positive feedback on.
We hosted a community event in the Walkley Community Centre to showcase and gather feedback on our outputs and made targeted, personal invites to local businesses and volunteers. We were told that it was a huge achievement to get these two groups in the same room. Our mapping was distilled into a Walkley tourist map celebrating the wealth of activities available in Walkley and we evolved an engagement mapping exercise from our event into a physical tool for future collaborative meetings and actions for the community groups.
Our work culminated in three comprehensive booklets detailing future visions for each of our clients and the whole of Walkley. We believe that a connected network of community hubs, businesses and residents will ensure a resilient and strong community for a long time to come. It is our hope that these will empower the community to visualise and lobby for the changes that they want to see.
