thoughts on The New Cultural Geographies of Smaller Places

Gemma and I attended a stimulating and fun day of presentations and performance convened by Amberlea Neely of Starling Start and staff at Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council in the Marketplace Theatre in Armagh last week. We were delighted to see friends and colleagues (and a sister) from Belfast City Council, Positive Carrickfergus, Queen’s University, the Rural Community Network, NI Screen and Daisy Chain there too.

The conference addressed the idea of placemaking, and we heard from artists, architects, planners, educators, students and local government officers from the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Britain about how they help to shape places.

Gemma and I have been working together with communities of place for the last 10 years, and holding our own collaborative and place-focused practice in mind as we listened, we heard much that was resonant and thought-provoking. Islander Architects introduced us to their Balbriggan-based practice and explained how the place itself – satellite to Dublin, coastal, a small older core surrounded by recently built estates – impacted on their work. Ailbhe Cunningham talked of the collaborative and creative co-design processes of Workhouse Union . Cara Courage spoke of how ‘placemakers’ might ensure they work in full and equal partnership with communities and Katherine Wheeler explained how this approach shaped The Stove Network.

I have spent the last 25 years thinking about what place means to people, because of what it means to me, within the fields of visual art and cultural geography. I was very interested in the use of particular words and the definitions that emerged during the day.

I have written before about the term ‘placemaking’ (see ‘Making Place: Part 1’ in this blog). Then I was concerned that its currency led to unreflective uses in work that failed to engage critically with the complexity of place and making place in Northern Ireland in particular. It was clear from this conference that while the word ‘placemaking’ can be empty in some contexts, as theory and as action it is also being shaped through skilled and experienced and careful thinking and practice.

As I listened and learned, I found I was working to understand what was not at first evident to me – that is, the role of place itself in placemaking. Thinking as a cultural geographer I was not used to defining placemaking as planning and designing places. This definition was the start point for much of the discussion, and eventually I caught up. The basis of the planning and design presented by architects and artists at this conference was community, with communities at the forefront of  the process. 

I began to feel, though, that a crucial element in the making of place was often absent or abstract in these expositions of placemaking. That was place itself – or rather, places themselves, those irreducible and tangible and distinct shapes and substances in which we live out our lives. Though Balbriggan and Galway and Durham and Dumfries were briefly described, I found I wanted more exposition of their active role in the placemaking taking place there.

The conference also used the term ‘cultural geographies’. When I began to make art about place, I looked for, and found, a determined focus on the reality and physicality of places in cultural geography. It is a distinct field that draws on multiple disciplines but is always focused on what place means to people. Cultural geography helped me to understand the potential for inclusion, and the risks of exclusion, in exploring the local (smaller places) for example. This has been key to my research and practice in tiny Northern Ireland, with its varied topography and intricate network of politico-religious place-identifications. Feminist cultural geography took me a step further, in engaging with and analysing particular places through the sensory experiences of particular bodies.

Cultural geography extends beyond the physical to consider the cultural meanings of place, of course, but the physical is always present. Places present us with topography, soil type, watersheds, climate and weather patterns, rocks and minerals and naturally occurring flora and fauna, routes and barriers and shelter and danger and resources. They make us as much as we make them. Geography has always played a role in history. It provides the forms in which culture, politics and economics arise and operate.

We heard much about communities, which is just right. People too are irreducible and tangible and distinct. But I wanted to hear more about the silent but significant partner in the process of placemaking – place itself.