I initiated and developed a pop-up citizen-led research forum in Sowerby Bridge.

I curated a programme of three events that were designed to bring civic institutions and citizens together to generate new ideas in response to the question "How can Sowerby Bridge be even better?"

The first was a West Yorkshire Walk that I deliberately programmed in "institutional hours" meaning during the working day Monday to Friday. I usually programme Same Skies walks either in the evenings or on weekends, which I would characterise as "citizen hours", in order that people with day jobs can come along. On this occasion I wanted to use the reputation and connections of Same Skies as leverage to get institutions and professional third sector organisations to attend. This was successful, with the fully booked event being attended by people from the NHS, Historic England, Calderdale Council (including a corporate lead), West Yorkshire Joint Services, Groundwork UK, a housing association with over 70,000 tenants, Calderdale City of Sanctuary, the town’s development board,Yorkshire & Humber Climate Commission, alongside local voluntary and community groups.

The second event in the series was a creative drop in day in which I commissioned Sowerby Bridge based producer Lucy Fee to work with local artists to create engaging, family friendly ways to collect data on how Sowerby Bridge could be even better. The drop in day took place in the Fire and Water hall, and I structured it along the lines of a village fete, with various activity stations that people could browse. These included a hook-a-duck, a coconut shy and model making, all involving conversation prompts about the future of the town. We employed two local actors dressed as Victorian firemen to tour the town centre promoting the event.

For the third part of the experiment we collated the data and then presented it in the format of an art exhibition to institutional attendees alongside citizens. After attendees had browsed the exhibition they took part in an ideas generation session: facilitated small group conversations in which they used the data as a starting point to come up with achievable ways to make Sowerby Bridge even better, framed as a question "What is the smallest possible first step to make Sowerby Bridge even better?"

The pop-up citizen-led research forum was in collaboration with Fire & Water in Sowerby Bridge.

Photos by Darren Fleming and Andrew Wilson.