For 15 years Futurecity has developed ambitious placemaking strategies, designed to encourage our clients to bring artists and creatives into the thinking for new developments as at early a stage as possible. The strategies have prompted new galleries and exhibition spaces, artist studios, public art, rehearsal space, cultural facilities, and new funding for large and small organisations.

We have always recommended that clients use commercial and industrial space for creative purposes, from artist studios and gallery space to rehearsal and dance space, design studios, creative labs, and workshops. But a growing ambition has been to move away from isolated ‘pop-up’ or random meanwhile projects to a new way of influencing the ‘narrative’ of new places, that delivers a more creative approach to a ‘purposeful living’ design of the public realm and non-residential spaces, across architecture and infrastructure.

In 2020, Futurecity began to develop the ‘PREVIEW’ Programme, consisting of ‘Living Labs’ in property developments across the UK. PREVIEW is designed to seed ideas that inform and influence the long term and to encourage creative incubation in spaces designed to attract young and emerging talent. PREVIEW objectives encourage experimentation that will attract investment and enable developers to learn new lessons about placemaking that connects their place to people with meaningful commercial purpose.

Check out and read on to learn more about how the PREVIEW programme has been applied to three vastly different development projects.

PREVIEW: The Lab E20 East Village, London Commissioned by Get Living

The Lab E20 was developed by Futurecity as part of our East Village Cultural Placemaking Strategy, commissioned by Get Living and launched in July 2021.

The first recommendation in our cultural strategy was for the creation of a fashion-led creative industries cluster, that could inform and influence the groundfloor commercial spaces site wide.

This creative industry cluster would be designed to support the vision of East Village’s transformation former the former Olympic village, into the commercial and residential hub for East Bank and London’s Fashion District.

The Lab E20 was designed and produced by Christopher Raeburn to host PREVIEW, a 6-month programme, to bring the principles of “remade, reduced, recycled” to the conversation around the future of retail and how flexible creative commercial spaces can accommodate exhibition, education, and creative workspace.

Futurecity curated a high-profile six-month cultural programme ‘PREVIEW’ brought together programme partners British Fashion Council, Raeburn, the Sustainable Angle, Fashion District, Loanhood, Fashion Revolution and D LAB, as leading organisations across regenerative architecture, design, fashion & circular economy retail to support in the regeneration of Newham. Events hosted by Fashion District and Fashion Revolution and supported by the Mayor of London, has seen residents and the wider community participate in talks, events, workshops, and exhibitions.

PREVIEW: 72 Upper Ground Southbank, London Commissioned by Mitsubishi Estate & CO-RE

PREVIEW was designed as a creative industry seeding programme for the proposed new office building on London’s Southbank at 72 Upper Ground. Futurecity implemented a 6-month (January – June 2021) residency programme, designed to use high quality office space in the former ITV Tower on London’s Southbank. The ‘Living Lab’ idea behind PREVIEW explored opportunities for the imaginative use of arts and cultural projects in the new building by supporting and promoting Lambeth based creative businesses, organisations, and projects.

Futurecity brought Black Cultural Archives, Young Creators UK, and Iconic Steps into the building to incubate their practices and to join design workshops with Futurecity, MAKE Architects and Grant Associates (landscape architects) to contribute ideas for the permanent cultural space and the use of arts, crafts, design, and cultural activity in the new building.

Futurecity has developed a Cultural Strategy and a set of Placemaking Principles for the new office building along with proposals for a new cultural space ‘The London Studios’.

PREVIEW: Creative BasildON Basildon, Essex Commissioned by Basildon Town Centre Management Company (BTCM)

In 2018 Futurecity wrote BasildON, a cultural strategy designed to re-invigorate and switch-on the cultural energy of Basildon Town Centre in Essex. The strategy contributed to a significant £1.2M Creative People and Places (CPP) award, which in turn has seen the Arts Council confer Priority Place status for Basildon. The scheme aims to rebalance arts investment to 54 towns and regions around the UK.

Futurecity has worked with a host of stakeholders including Basildon Council, CPP and arts agency Things Made Public, to develop the strategy into a PREVIEW programme of cultural projects designed to animate and reinvigorate retail space and to showcase the cultural and community energy of the town.

Local and international artists have worked with community groups to create a series of imaginative and impactful cultural programmes, from large scale street art, photography and film to music, creative tech, public art, and play, merging traditional skills with creative technologies. The success of Creative BasildON has been rewarded with a further £850k funding from Arts Council England to take its work from April 22 to March 25 and become part of its National Portfolio.

Catch up with the latest Creative BasildON programme here. Read more here.

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Video and Image credits: 1. The Lab E20. Credit: Alex Howat 2. 72 Upper Ground. Credit: Young Creators UK 3. T.I.M.E (Therapy In Music Education) and Strange Pill