Brixton Village Photos

Here are some of my photos from our trip to Brixton. I've just realised that I don't have any photos of the amazing market stalls, which were selling the most incredible assortment of food. These stalls are the life-force of the market, the reason for its existence, and it was interesting to see how the other ventures co-existed with them.




The Taj fabrics shop was home for a project working with recovering drug addicts. They were working with papier-mache, produced from their own shredded medical records.

The Brixton transition towns project offered information about the project for people interested in getting involved, as well as a food-map of the area and a wall on which people could post suggestions about how Brixton could be better. Thanks to Pam and Duncan for taking the time to talk to us.


Thanks to Hannah at the Work Shop for letting us interupt her work and patiently answering all our questions...



Brixton Pound sauce - you can only buy it with Brixton pounds, which caused me a bit of confusion, but I got it in the end (no, I didn't nick it)
Also thanks to Emma in the 'nap' shop, who was actively providing a solution to where people could have 40 winks after lunch.

Day trip to the Brixton Project

Well Laura and I arrived safely back from big London town last night after our research day trip to the Brixton Village Project. We met with Dougald Hind founder of the Spacemakers Agency, the driving force behind the project who gave us a guided tour and an amazing insight into the project. So what did we find learn?

Well after a hearty breakfast in the local greasy spoon we got down to business and began shopping......sorry researching! Brixton has a busy local market community and at the heart of it sits the Granville arcade, however like many of the nations arcades many of the shops have gradually become empty over the years and in desperate need of a little TLC. But thanks to the Spacemakers Agency and their work in bringing life into the empty spaces this little market arcade is thriving once more. The market has a mix of original stalls selling fruit, vegetables & fish alongside the new cafes, restaurants, galleries, workshops and boutique shops.

Laura and I met with Dougald inside the Brixton Cornercopia (a great little cafe which even produces its very own Brixton Brown Sauce which you can only buy with the Brixton Pound!) and had a chat about the project including some of the difficulties in making a project like this happen as well as the great successes and the growing weekly visitors. We also spoke about ARK and the trials and tribulations of establishing a network and what we had achieved so far. Reassuringly Dougald had gone through a similar experience and passed on a few handy tips which we can share with you next Wednesday. We were then given a full guided tour and were introduced to some of the owners and creators.

A true testament to the community spirit was the many co-owned shops and spaces such as The Wonderful World of... this lovely little shop had a quirky mix of renovated furniture, fair trade clothing and hand-made lanterns. Like many of the shops they also run workshops encouraging visitors to 'get involved' and become part of the market community. We also popped into Workshop where they sell a range of  products made from reused and recycled fabrics plus you can try your hand at sewing and upcycling your own clothes, or for the little ones check out the Okido doodle shop.

What was clear was that community integration and involvement at every stage was key ensuring both the new and old tenants could work alongside and support each other. Weekly meetings have become a key part of the process encouraging face to face communication to help build and maintain the community. Dougald and the team are doing an amazing job in facilitating and coordinating the project and the commitment by all is truly inspiring!

So a big thanks to Dougald and everyone we met for being so open and helpful, it will be a big help with our own empty space project and if you are interested in getting involved come and chat to us next wednesday in CAI (we are the ones with the pink socia-bull)

Assembly train station project

We had our first sessions on this last Wednesday - we just had an open exploration of "accessibility" and how it may relate to the consultation.

One of the issues that became clear for the next stages is the importance of stories (narrative) and how these can provide insights to accessibility issues. They can allow you to explore the problems and issues much more deeply than if you concentrated on technical or architectural solutions.

There can be a tendency to converge on solution or actions to early so hopefully as this design process builds it will shed new and possibly unexpected light on the issue.

(i did say I was going to use the original post for updates but I can't seem to embed images in the comments....)

We have a mascot

Laura came across this on the weekend and it is totally perfect for ARK. Just needs a lick of paint and I think it will be our very own cow, which will hopefully aid people finding us on the night.



Going pink

Empty shops update

Cardiff city centre has a number of empty shop spaces and so we thought ‘wouldn’t it be great to use them?’

My own particular interest is in design, performance and theatre and so I expressed an interest to my fellow ARKies in setting up a project to turn an empty shop space in Cardiff city centre into a place for performance, storytelling and exchange. At the moment we’re working on finding an empty shop to do the project in, as well as gathering a group of people who would like to take part. A few Wednesdays ago we had a session to come up with ideas for the project and to discuss how it could take shape and some really interesting ideas came out of it.

Then there’s an exciting week ahead – lots of meetings, discussions and visits, including one to the Brixton Village project which I’m really excited about.

I’ll keep updating as things develop, but if anyone wants to get involved come along on Wednesday or get in touch. We’ll be the ones sat around the cow…

How accessible are Welsh Railway stations?

The National Assembly in Wales has launched a consultation into the accessibility of Welsh Railway stations. This is something that ARK are interested in. It is related to one of the projects we identified at our launch event - see the project listed here -

We are not experts in trains or station architecture but we are among those that know trains and train stations the best... the users. We are going to use some design and creativity tools to explore the issue of accessibility and present the assembly with some interesting and hopefully unexpected ideas and actions that hopefully they can take forward. The people working on this project will include product designers, brand designers, photographers, theatre designers, environmental specialists and generally interested people from Cardiff.

below is a very quick and rough brief for the project (thanks to Service Design Tools for the images !!). We will use this post to update everyone of the project as it progresses.

social design presentation

I uploaded the presentation I made last week to the Wednesday club. It was a brief exploration on how I saw social design developing and what were some of the broad issues impacting on design.

It probably isn't the most self explanatory presentation without me waffling through it but the main messages were that all people want to be and can be creative, human networks and relationships are as important as ever, new models of exchange (not only for profit) are emerging and social design ultimately needs to be engaging and fun.

Orafferty Socialdesign

View more presentations from sorafferty.