Forthcoming events:
For York Design Week we are running a series of events.
Thinking York from the Villages – Walks with My Future York
t is often said that York’s city centre and suburbs face different issues to York’s villages – and that those that live in town rarely understand what matters to people living out of town. Yet the biggest issues we face – whether housing and movement – can only be addressed by building mutual understanding between people who live in rural and urban York. We ask: How do the biggest issues York faces look from the perspective of six of York’s villages? How can we use these conversations to think about designing deliberative systems that facilitate and link deep and informed conversations across York?
To experiment as part of York Design Week, we will run a set of small socially-distanced walks and conversations in six of York’s villages and then invite everyone involved – together with interested urban dwellers – to meet online so we can draw out the issues and reflect on how to design deliberative systems that can link us together.
Saturday 24th October 2020
To book the My Future York walk in Strensall click here 12-1.30pm
To book the My Future York walk in Haxby click here 2-3.30pm
To book the My Future York walk in New Earswick and Huntington click here 4-5.30pm
Sunday 25th October 2020
To book the My Future York walk in Dunnington click here 12-1.30pm
To book the My Future York walk in Wheldrake click here 2-3.30pm
To book the My Future York walk in Bishopthorpe click here 4-5.30pm
There will also be a collective, online session on Saturday 31st October 2-3.30pm
From Democratic Desire to Communicating for Change
Friday, October 30, 2020
4:00 PM 5:00 PM
My Castle Gateway and My York Central have generated very clear steers on what the people of York want for the future of the city – and have also clarified significant tensions.
In this workshop, we call on York’s design and communication talent to translate the city’s democratic will into communications strategies that will enable change. The issue we will work on together is changing York’s relationship to the car. One thing hard core car drivers, those living by major roads, cyclists and those that travel by bus or walk have in common is that no one wants more traffic. Can we use this shared desire as a basis for a communications campaign that will reduce car use and allow us to rethink our public spaces?
Previous events:
Climax City: Masterplanning and the Complexity of Urban Growth
29th October 2019
The New School House Gallery, Peasholme Green
Book your place
David Rudlin is a masterplanner and director of URBED, known for innovative projects which get to the heart of the challenges facing cities. David has been an interlocutor with York and its distinctive qualities and issues for many years. David’s understanding of York informed Uxcester Garden City, his Wolfson Economic Prize winning proposal co-authored with Nicholas Falk, which used York (disguised by being rotated) to show how cities of similar scale could double in size in ways which were both ‘economically viable and popular’. David will be joining us on this occasion to talk about his new book Climax City: Masterplanning and the Complexity of Urban Growth which uses intricate and compelling maps to raise big questions for planning and urban development. We will then open the discussion up to explore what some of these ideas might mean both for York and for the world today.
David Rudlin will be in conversation with Charlotte Harrison who is a Partner at York’s Mass Architecture. Part of York Design Week and the York Collaborative Future series.
The Future of Bootham Park: Building an open community brief
27th October 2018, join us for walks at 10am [book your place], 12noon [book your place], 2pm (accessible walk, flat access only and slower pace) [book your place], 2.30pm [book your place] and 4pm [book your place]
What matters to you about Bootham Park? What would you like to use Bootham Park for? Join us to explore what makes Bootham Park significant and how the site can play a role in York’s future.
Bootham Park
The Bootham Park is extremely important to the city. When the hospital opened its doors in 1777, it was one of the first purpose-built mental health ‘asylums’ in England. During the long history of mental health services on the site there have been many changes in the way care has been provided and just as many changes and additions to the buildings themselves.
The hospital has now closed after proving unsuitable to provide a viable and appropriate environment for modern mental health services. Following public engagement and planning approval in 2017, a new 60-bed hospital which will meet current high standards of care will open on Haxby Road in 2020.
What is happening now?
The council is working with local and national health partners to guide redevelopment of the publically-owned assets on the Bootham site and adjacent land. We are exploring the use of a site featuring three pieces of land including the old hospital, the empty site of the former nurses accommodation, and the coach/car park. Bringing these together allows a more comprehensive approach to redevelopment, with a potentially larger benefit to the city.
We want to make sure that future developments continue to protect the significant heritage assets on the site. We are also exploring how these sites interact with the wider area at the heart of York.
The partnership need your views to help us shape Bootham Park, protect its heritage and consider what potential uses you believe may be appropriate. The council and national health partners have are developing some ideas for how the site could be used and there are constraints that need to be considered when thinking about the future of Bootham Park – but they recognise that this is a much loved part of York and want to involve all that have a stake in what happens next.
Building an open community brief
As part of this, My Future York are running a series of walks to explore Bootham Park and to work with local people to identify what matters about the site in terms of its heritage and current uses and what people want to use the site for in the future.
The walks will last one hour and each walk will be the same. Sign up above.
My Future York Collaborative Hustings
24th April 2019, 6-8pm
Spark York
Hustings are usually a combative affair. This local election season in York, can we create a more collaborative approach? Join us for the My Future York Collaborative Hustings.
In the My Future York Collaborative Hustings we plan to reframe hustings – or, in fact, tap into its more ancient meaning. While today ‘hustings’ immediately evokes a series of candidates making speeches and answering questions for an audience, its arcane use, from Old Norse, is ‘an assembly for deliberative purposes’.
For the 2019 Collaborative Hustings we have chosen a specific issue facing York: traffic congestion. While there are significant differences between political parties in how we might tackle traffic congestion, there is cross-party and wide spread public recognition that congestion is an urgent issue. It’s also an issue with only the vaguest of boundaries, touching on transport, urban planning, environmental issues and the nature of our city centre – it’s much broader than a single manifesto issue.
Traffic congestion is also an issue that cannot be fully understood or simply fixed top down by politicians. It is linked into everyday experiences, actions and choices made by all of us who live in York. It is, therefore, an issue that we need to address collaboratively.
We’ll start the hustings by collectively identifying the key issues which contribute to creating traffic congestion and then coming together to map out the issues, seeing how they might connect and identifying where the leverage points for change might be. We’ll then ask candidates from all parties to talk about how they might respond to these issues and leverage points and look for the commonalities in approach. We will then work together – councillors-to-be and citizens – to set out how all of us can contribute to putting a long term collective approach into practice.
York Central Co-Owned: Making it happen
13th January 2020
18:30 – 20:30
Cafeteria, Cinder Building off Cinder Lane (YO26 4XD).
Book your place
Want to see community-led development on York Central? Come and help shape it!
Through the My York Central public discussions emerged eight Big Ideas. They included: ‘Homes for living, not investment’; ‘People, not more cars’ and ‘A community made through exchange’. We’re now working with York Central Partnership and City of York Council to make these ideas a reality on York Central.
Read more.
Co-Owned Neighbourhoods on York Central – Shaping a way forward
Thursday 28th November 2019
6.30-8.30pm
Friargate Quaker Meeting House, Lower Friargate, York, YO1 9RL
Book a place
Our York Design Week event identified a range of issues – from sharing to wildness – and collective discussion of these flagged up a number of initial steps on the path towards a community partnership that could shape York Central and create homes, work, culture and play there. This event will look at these steps and we’ll start working out…
– what sort of body should we establish to carry this process forwards?
– how can we work towards a range of types of housing and tenures on York Central?
– how can we shape wonderful, wild, open space in an urban environment?
– how do we bring on board partners who will connect York’s amazing education and culture with learning, creativity and work?
– how can we ensure the development responds to the climate emergency and zero-carbon commitments which York has made?
Come along and collectively take this forwards. An evening of sharing of ideas and knowledge, planning and setting of goals. If you’re new to York Central and the community’s vision for it, then take a look here.