A green wall facade across the passageway could create a bold landmark to attract people to the courtyard space.
I was asked if I was OK!
Subway.docx
Subway
Here, it’s all about the brand.
Green and yellow
Flashes of black
As staff move quickly to
Make subs
6 inch
Foot long
In the lunchtime rush
It’s all go, go, go.
Here, it’s all about the image.
New York subways
Map the walls
Alongside
Legends
Heroes
Iconics
Classics
Not names I would associate
With sandwiches
But to be fair I am not the target here
Too old by a country mile.
Here, it’s all about immediacy
Driven by technology
Attractive to young minds
Thumbs scroll over phones
To place orders
To make payments
To text their mate, who’s
Sat right next to them
Phones, phones, phones
As the Deliveroo driver
Double parks across the street
To pick up a meal deal
As ovens ping and
Cookies slide off trays and
A student picks and goes
No desire to sit in or
Wait a while.
Here, it’s all about speed and
It is busy.
A boy in a boiler suit
Made for a man
Jokes with his mate
He can’t decide what to order
There’s too much choice
He doesn’t know what he wants
He needs inspiration and
The counter guy offers him help
Bread style
Filling
Extra cheese
Drink and a cookie.
His mate ribs him
For getting double Jalapenos
But he doesn’t care.
Here, it’s all about the future
Contactless
A space in which a new generation move
Transactional
The model of a brave new world
Phone app ordering
Because this is what some people want
Safe
Easy
Quick
Convenient
Just because it’s not for me
Doesn’t make it wrong and
Judging by the queue at the door
They’re obviously doing something right.
I leave as another delivery
Heads out the door.
Boilersuit boy is making his way down the High Street
Back to college.
I’m sure he’ll be back tomorrow
Grateful for the help with his order.
Slow Rick stopping to talk to shop keeper
Slowly walking couple - man helping older woman
People chatting & saying hi to someone passing in their car
876 Lounge - Music blasting reggae, smiley man gave me thumbs up: 'you alright?'
Stepping Stone 4 adds layers to the High Street. Like the other visions, we wanted to use CoLab Dudley’s principles ‘use nature as a guidebook’ and ‘create conditions for curiosity and experimentation’. The main way we proposed to do this was adding a green canopy to provide shelter, create a hybrid indoor outdoor space welcoming to families and a more communal open space, and support ecosystems.
In this post, we captured the street’s atmosphere filled with colour, activity, and pedestrianised streets.
(We decided to present our narrative through social media and instagram posts as we wanted to showcase what individual experiences might be like when experiencing the future High Street. Each of our posts captures a different element of experience on the High Street to form a collective scenario.)
Shopping in groups, families / friends
Children at play
Not many smiles? People avoiding eye contact but curious as to what I'm doing...
It is 5pm in the evening and the shops are still full with customers. David has had a long and busy working day at the shop and can now finally take a break, and so he ventured out onto the street to get fresh air. David randomly bumped into an old customer, they both instantly recognised each other, and decided to share some conversations on a nearby bench. The old customer could not stop pointing out many of positive changes on the High Street since he last visited. He noticed the fresh air from more vegetation and less pollution, outdoor seating and a thriving enjoyable space.
["Pretty sure I witnessed a drug deal and shoplift"]
Fellow detector friendly hello!
Golden Touch.docx
Golden Touch
It’s my wedding anniversary
Ari is cutting my hair
“To make you look younger”
He says
We guess each other’s age
A trick he’s pretty good at
We talk about daughters
Sons
Families
How he goes back every year
When he can
To northern Iran
But really his family’s here now
Round the houses in Brum
From a young age
Now his home is Dudley
Four years in the shop
Cutting
Blending
Trimming
The heat from the hair dryer
Beats the sweepings to the floor and
I escape for twenty minutes
In the stories
In the swift hands
The mirrors
Posters from a bygone age
Product on the shelves
The smell of wax and leather
Scissors sweep over the comb and
I learn that the skills are hard taught
From the first time with the razor
To the years later
Efficient
Precise
Art in my eyes
Soon his brother will join him
From Manchester
Where he’s currently learning
To catch up
The future is all about the family and
I hope the shop is still here
For when his son
Picks up the scissors
For the first time
Thanks for the haircut Ari
It took years off me
Friendliness outside the pub! copy
Tiny broken pipe / water fall, spraying people with water as they walk by
Our collective vision for Dudley is to support a creative community that is connected through our internet of things; creating spaces that allow for the collection and redistribution of materials that locals can use to construct products with. Community engagement is central to this design network with local businesses encouraged to get involved in manufacturing.
We decided to bring alive this vision through a series of pavilions positioned through the High Street, following a process through recycling, storing constructing and manufacturing. To take this idea further, we allocated several empty units along the High Street to become spaces involved in the open factory, from workshops, educational centres and co-working hubs. Since we wanted to show the journey people would be able to take, we decided to create a storyboard for our final visual.
These visuals show how the pavilions could sit in the High Street, starting at the market place, past CoLab Dudley’s base, and ending up at Top Church. We wanted to show how people would be able to interact with these different spaces and navigate between them.
Shrewsbury Arms mates outside laughing. Work, play after.
Atifa lives nearby. During her free time, Atifa takes part in social work and welcomes the visitors of the High Street. Her main responsibility involves managing the food produced on street garden. A group of out of town visitors seemed lost on the street as they were wondering about what to do after shopping. Atifa suggested to participate in a workshop in the community kitchen. They plucked some berries and veggies from street and made a quick salad with a locally developed recipe that they had never tried. They thanked Atifa for the new recipe.
friendly surveillance of spiders in the top right corner of the lab - be nice!
Bake 'n' Butty.docx
Bake ‘n’ Butty
Fairy lights all year round
Three clocks working triple time
More seating at the rear and
Above the sound of something frying in a pan
Laughter
The scrape of cutlery on finished plates
Stacked and cleared
Two cappuccinos
Two toasted teacakes
Footsteps on the lino floor
The hum of radio from somewhere
The clash of a saucepan lid
Tea, milk, two sugars
The tapping of a spoon on a plastic bowl
Fishfinger sandwich to take away
Do you need a receipt?
It won’t be long, alright?
Chips sizzling in the deep fat
Steam escaping the coffee machine
There’s your knife and fork
Musical buttons singing from the till
No sugar, I’m sweet enough
A message left on the answering machine
Phone rings
How can I help you?
Mobile notification
Chatter
Printing
There’s your change
I’ll bring your coffee over
Sausage, egg and chips
Large breakfast, no beans
Two lattes
Milk delivery
Grated cheese in a bag
Butter balanced in the crock of an arm
Is there enough money in the till?
Bacon and egg sandwich to go
Cappuccino
Cheers love
It was lovely, thank you
All this is seen and heard as
I am joined at my table
To talk through
Covid
Cars
Past lives
Old homes
Acceptance
Cooking
Gender
Pubs
Health and
Putting the world back together
My tea is done
I pop my mug back on the counter
All this for the prices of a cuppa I think
Stepping out past the flashing fairy lights
Nowhere to sit?
Market people chatting under the shelter
Friendly intro chat to Lorna!
In this picture from 1914 in Dudley, you can just make out my grandfather. He's the small boy with the cap running across Wolverhampton Street in the days when the trams were still running. Years later we worked out that this day was probably a defining moment in his life, the day he chose never to have a second thought or to be bullied by others. You can see him running. This is because he had stolen the ham you can see him carrying under his arm. This one action started a chain of events for my grandfather that would go on to dominate his formative years. Petty larceny, theft, criminal activity that would shape him, turn him into one of the most notorious villains in the Black Country.
When he died in 1972, this photograph turned up amongst his possessions, in a locked drawer of his bureau. We agreed amongst us that no one in the family had ever seen this photo before, curious as to its importance to him. On the back of the photo he had written the date and time, together with a brief note - "Me stealing ham from W.Smiths, butcher". He would have been 10 years old and this was perhaps his first, or at least one of his first criminal acts.
We have no idea who took the photograph or how he had come to have the original print in his possession, but it appears that it held some significance for him as he kept it all of his life locked away in his bureau drawer.
Men standing on grass - connecting with extra space on High Street - relaxing / watching the traffic
Together, dad feeding birds
By using the courtyard space as allotments, it will create a social hub for the local people and connect it to local businesses and stores.
A lady waving to a child
A harmonic and diverse community ["Everyone I spoke to was nice"]
Time rebels deep in conversation!
Caffe Min.docx
Caffe Min
Breakfast
Lunch
Meal deal
Everything you would expect
Fresh from the takeaway menu
Ham baguette
With a little bit of mayonnaise
Jacket potato
Hot cup of coffee
Bacon sarnie
Brown sauce
Not red
Tikka mint mayo panini
Something you might not expect
Sunglasses!
I sit on a long bench
Listening to Tainted Love
Over the radio
Reading one of the many signs
About coffee and good vibes
Jayne and Mustafa
Serve the steady flow of regulars
Some sit outside most of the day
Watching
Chatting
Taking it all in
There’s always a spot for them
As others come and go
Mustafa hopes that more regulars
Will return
From offices
When they can
The future seems uncertain
Until normality returns
Since West Brom
27 years ago
Jayne and Mustafa
Have been working together
She says she “has a thick skin to have put up with him for so long”
He says “she’s the second woman in his life”
Cheerful banter
From a lifetime of serving
Cooking
Cleaning
Managing
This is their third café in Dudley
23 years and still going
Opposite the Full Moon
Tables and chairs on the pavement
Watching the comings and goings
I end up chatting to Kath
Over a cup of tea
As she gets a sausage baguette
For the lady she volunteers with
Kath comes every Friday
For breakfast with her friends and
I see how this all takes shape
Regular
Reliable
Dependable
I say goodbye
Head back up the town
As Magic FM fades in the distance
I think I’ll probably pop in again
For a cup of tea
This gift represents the green spaces around CoLab Dudley and the connections they have to the high street. The black point marks the location of the High Street and the other pins mark each green space within the High Street’s immediate location. The lines act as a travel route that you may take in order to get from one green space to another. From this we can establish that there is a lack of greenery in some spaces. This then impacts the High Street as people do not need to use it as a travel route. By simply creating more of these green spaces like in the top right it will add more connections to the High Street which will draw more people to this particular location.
Stepping Stone 2 is about making the High Street bespoke to Dudley through street furniture. We wanted to make the High Street more sociable and colourful. By providing outdoor seating areas, people would be invited to speak to each other and bring back a sense of community.
A day out in Dudley
Time inside passes slow,
So we went out for the day,
My favourite place to go,
The high street in Dudley
I'm sure that you'd agree
It's not like any other town,
There is lots to do and see
And there's space to run around
There's a playground there
Just in the middle of the street
And fruit growing everywhere
The strawberries taste so sweet
There's lots of places for grown-ups
Where they like to chat and sit
They say 'hello ya right bab?'
And then Tarra a bit.
There is no need to in
When it's black over bill's mother
Because should the rain begin
The canopy is the perfect cover
The grown-ups pick the veggies
And call come get some grub
We jump down from our climbing trees
And head over to the food hub
We get the buz back home for tea
And get it down our wazzin
I look back on the day with glee
My Dudley town is bostin.
1 bench being used - lots unused?
Green pockets overlooked by passersby?
This post promotes the opening of a community kitchen, supported by the Participatory City model.
(We decided to present our narrative through social media and instagram posts as we wanted to showcase what individual experiences might be like when experiencing the future High Street. Each of our posts captures a different element of experience on the High Street to form a collective scenario.)
Only two people sitting on benches at this time
Friendliness inside the pub!
Bianca and her friends went clothes shopping. As they could smell the delicious food making in the community kitchen, they curiously went inside for the first time. Bianca and her friends were offered freshly made, delicious soup.
Tiny acts of random kindness like picking up a dropped pen for someone else
Lingered here chatting to the shop keeper!
Calm, relax, serenity, togetherness
This post captures the street qualities where the visitors experience the colour and aromas of the food.
(We decided to present our narrative through social media and instagram posts as we wanted to showcase what individual experiences might be like when experiencing the future High Street. Each of our posts captures a different element of experience on the High Street to form a collective scenario.)
Zoe - visitors economy - fellow detectorist from council
We feel that our local High Streets should be the focal point for our local community. They should be seen as places of interest and a place where you can go for both essential items and leisure. Therefore, we feel making the High Street pedestrianised would mean that there is a larger space to work with on the High Street and that it will not only allow locals to shop but also congregate and relax with family and friends.
A sketch showing workshops utilising the empty spaces, street furniture, canopies on the side, and street art to brighten and liven the current High Street.
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A collage response to a Co.LAB gift for the High St - “It was nice to be able to use the image for something else. It made me think about placing the cut-out roadmap onto a slightly brighter future version, with colour, vibrancy and plantlife, so that it reminds me what we are heading towards, but still with a hark back to the people and the industry that made Dudley the town it is...”
The interior of the community kitchen would be inviting and colourful to create a positive atmosphere. The colours were abstracted from one of our group collages of food. The kitchen counters are not considered as a back of house element; they have been combined with seating as we are trying to embrace the cooking process. The kitchen desk is designed in a way so multiple people can work together from all sides, with central storage for herbs.
The facade of the kitchen contains a small window so food can be sold outside. We have also created a vertical herb garden so it can be used in the community kitchen. We wanted to keep these below eye-line so people outdoors have a clear view into what’s going on inside.
This street section shows activity from the back of the community kitchen to the other end of the street and how all these elements are working coherently. The street is filled more with people rather than cars. We believe that the outdoor seating, more trees, canopies and street lights can attract people to connect with the High Street.
The first Stepping Stone project looks into designing multifunctional furniture for Dudley High Street to provide opportunities for a regenerative community, focusing on how the high street can be occupied with resilience. Initially, the stalls act as market stalls to provide opportunities for enterprises and small businesses to begin thriving and encouraging the High Street to become a place of inclusivity.
However, the stalls can extend out into outdoor seating arrangements, which can become an extension of the community kitchen and during events can become a part of the whole atmosphere.
By extending the furniture, they can connect together and become a large spread where people can sit together and enjoy company. It creates a lowered centre space so children can sit together, or paint on the surfaces. We decided to focus on furniture because we felt the importance of it can go unrecognised. We felt through the design of this market stall, many memories can be created and attached to these items, and become valuable assets within the community.
Ramsey's.docx
Ramsey’s
Wedged between G P Footwear and the Dental Surgery
Set back in the shadows under the circular cross
Behind the overspill of colour and dazzle
You will find Ramsey’s shop
Cornucopia of ladies fashion
Shoes
Handbags and
Accessories
Born out of West Brom clearance
Been six years grafting
Stretching a profit
Out of lycra and cotton
Cheaper than the exact same jeans
You will find in River Island or H&M
But people still like to haggle for
A pound off here
A fiver there
Ramsey is waiting
Waiting for the people to return
Waiting for Covid to subside
Waiting for the coats to fly
The joggers to shift gear
Blouses to find a new lease of life
So that the drive from Oldbury
Six days a week
Means more than just petrol in the tank
Wasted hours
Asking him about the future
Brings no sugar coating
Of what needs to change
More advertising please
Less traffic down the road
More foot-flow up this end
Where Ramsey offers
Cheap and cheerful
In all the colours of the rainbow
His rails rally already
Outside the shop
Where he would like to see
A revolution
People stop to pass the time though
To talk around it
Time for a change
One way or another
Time for a change
Sooner rather than later
While Ramsey soldiers on
Filling the street with colour
The sun glinting off
A nicely priced
Must have
Looking to be the centrepiece of our exhibition, we proposed to create a site model of Dudley Highstreet at 1:200 scale with buildings modelled in a simple form. Local residents and visitors to the exhibition are then invited to decorate a chosen building to how they would envision it sat within the context of a greener Highstreet. We want to tie in our themes of biodiversity and materials by proposing that buildings can, and do, have the potential to be a lot healthier, sustainable, and interactive on the street. This site model also helps gain vital public opinions on the Highstreet and prompts discussion of areas most in need of attention.
To ensure that the model is utilising the MDF to the most efficient standard possible. First, the centres of the massing blocks have been hollowed out. This allows a reduction in materials used as other buildings can be cut in the centres of the model. Then the top is finished with a solid piece.
The waste material is placed into the recycling rack where other students can reuse it; otherwise, if the material left cannot be used for another project, it is recycled correctly by the university.
The model spanned just over 3.4m long and over 50cm wide. With the majority being cut from scrap woods that would fit the jigsaw of the shape, we were able to drastically cut down on waste. We also got some small benches and bee hives printed from recycled plastics, and used dried flowers as trees to represent the green spaces. Ultimately, the model seemed like a huge success, and really helped portray our ideas about Dudley High Street to those who came by. Everyone from Dudley who saw the model knew that it was the High Street, and interacted well with it. The size did make it difficult to move, especially to carry to the site, but it sat nicely in the centre of the the room and really drew people in to interact with it.
The model brought people in from outside to play with, write on, interact with. It became a spectacle for the public to come in and see what was happening and offer their ideas about what could be done.
The event was a success. Many people from the public (those who heard about the event, and those who just happened across it on the day) came in to interact with the model, which sat as the centre piece in the room. Kids liked to play with the pieces while the adults talked about things that could come from actions to help the High Street, not just leave it as is.
SOME OF THE KEY IDEAS WERE:
- The Shops need to be inviting for everyone. It’s no good having these places to go if people would rather take a bus to the next town.
- Just putting up boards across the windows is awful. Paint, Posters, Graffiti: Anything that actually makes the High Street look still alive is better than just wooden boards.
- More Green is needed. While it is obvious that there is a lack of Trees, many people wanted to push for these small bushes or planting spaces that could easily be implemented across the street.
- Spaces for public events or for people to at least gather at. While there is the Market and Fountain, it is not enough for the people of Dudley.
- Something needs to be done about the cars on the High Street. Some were Pro-Removal of all Cars, while some just wanted to limit when they could access the High Street.
Following the exhibition we created a series of drawings with our own interpretation of Sarah Wigglesworth ‘The Dining Table’ drawing. The drawings are a perfect representation of the our interactive model at the ERA Environmental Exhibition and Event. Showing the interaction the public had with the model, as well as the conversations that were held around the model.
This post develops what the community kitchen has to offer with street grown resources and community engagement.
(We decided to present our narrative through social media and instagram posts as we wanted to showcase what individual experiences might be like when experiencing the future High Street. Each of our posts captures a different element of experience on the High Street to form a collective scenario.)
People chatting / laughing with one another "gossip"
I was asked about what I was doing [asked them what they think is beautiful] Old lamp posts giving the town some character
Tiny random acts of kindness like picking up blown away posters
The third Stepping Stone project attempted to design the community kitchen in one of the empty shops on Dudley High Street. We all know that food is an essential factor in our life and eating and cooking the food is not an abstract activity we do, it is part of our everyday routine. In our initial research, we found that many people live alone in compact housing on the High Street. We thought the kitchen connect the residents with society. We decided to make the process of preparing food more enjoyable. As our aim was to grow food on the street wherever possible, we can use these vegetables for the community kitchen. This will encourage residents to come down onto the street and engage with it. This could also be a new experience for the visitors of the High Street.
Davo Turkish Hairstyles - Laughs, ginger beer, smiles
The themes I investigated were the Connections, Movement, Routes and Ways. My gift explores those themes through a figurative expression hidden within the structure of the dreamcatcher, allowing for a flexible interpretation by the audience, and to aid the imagination.
The structure of the dreamcatcher symbolizes the relationship between the destination and the journey the user undertakes, but while it highlights the importance of the destination, placing it in the centre as the biggest piece, it emphasizes the significance of the journey over the destination in the ratio of one big element vs many small elements.
This can be relevant to the High Street, if the connections are thought of beyond the transport means, and can relate to anything from the layout of the landscape of the High Street, to the interactions between the users.
The web symbolizes the connections between the pieces, plotting the blue foam pieces around the different lengths of the thread, off the centre where the destination piece is plotted. This is meant to show how the connections can be made in various ways and that there is no set order or pattern, meaning that the movement is individual and the connections are adaptable.
The blue foam pieces can be viewed as points or highlights of the journey, or they can represent different ways of getting to, and from the centre, suggesting that the journey doesn’t end with the destination.
Another way in which the web can be interpreted is that the small foam pieces are the destinations, the thread is the connection between them and the big piece symbolizes the decision making.
Dudley young people of black ethnicity worked together to put on a Fashion Talent and History show to celebrate Black heritage and fashion for Jamaican Independence day 2021. This show took place at the African Caribbean Centre in Dudley.
This gift aims to address the disconnect between Dudley and its industrial history. Once the ‘Capital of the Black Country’ its high street now looks like any other. With the intention of public engagement, this gift could be handed out at CoLab Dudley’s base. Starting from there, people would be able to follow the map and visit the places marked by stars — all of which hold some historical significance whether it be the location of an old factory or school — where one missing puzzle piece may be located. Only after visiting these locations would they be able to complete the puzzle and see the final image of Dudley’s high street.
(*imagining*) two Christmas spirited robins joining in with the festivities of the street, singing along with your Christmas joys.