Bit small for a shop, maybe. Maybe.
What is your town or city centre doing with its decommissioned red phone boxes…?
The question came up this week as part of a wider conversation about the (much bigger…?) role arts & crafts, creative, culture, history & heritage can play in our #highstreet places.
For #TheVacantShopsAcademy locations we’ll regularly ask tackling vacancy-focused ‘place partnerships’ to think of this list as potential options for taking on vacant units, especially where business and resident consultation suggests improving the mix of uses is important.
This response our #placemaking friend
Chris Wade FIPM at The People & Places Partnership Ltd. tells us is a regular feature of his work on customer (and importantly non-customer) perceptions.
We also argue that creativity has a big part to play beyond vacancy as a contribution to the attractiveness of your place, to extending dwell-time, creating trails of maybe art or heritage features, and crucially where it prompts visitors to take and share images across social media to ‘encourage’ others.
Our visit this week to Brackley and Towcester featured several examples. It might be commissioned or guerrilla, modern or historic, connected or (seemingly) random. And those red phone boxes are for sure an opportunity.
The team there would love to hear examples of these #heritage treasures being re-used from your places. Do share…
