this place [of mine]

What does the future of our high street look like? Manchester-based FutureEverything were working with the ten boroughs of Greater Manchester to give Manchester’s young people a chance to answer this question. They approached us to be part of that collaboration — from the initial kick-off workshop all the way through to delivery of an online platform that would showcase the responses, in the form of digital artworks, of the young people (or Young Producers) involved.

Ten Young Producers were selected from each of the boroughs of Greater Manchester and invited to participate in the process. Being that the project ran throughout the 2020 lockdown, we joined FutureEverything and the Young Producers to facilitate a series of online and interactive workshops. These were designed to unpick the opinions of the young people, to help inspire their artwork responses and to shape what the online platform might look like, through their eyes.

Working with the outputs from the Young Producers and Citizen Futurists (local artists that were selected to represent each region of Greater Manchester), we took a smorgasbord of content including: video, imagery, spoken word, 3D models, animations and games and translated them into a fully explorable 3D world. Working from a series of mockup animations to translate this concept and progress along the journey, we built the site to house all of this content — releasing the exhibition from the issues of a touring physical location and giving the Young Producers a space to own and reflect their ideals.

Alongside the exploration of digital artworks, visitors to the site can participate in the wider conversation around the future of the high street. The experience prompts the user to answer questions and submit their own opinions to add to the collective vision. Responses from visitors are collected within the back-end of the site, giving Greater Manchester authorities a way to understand the youth voice and to help inform their messaging moving forward. This allowed this place [of mine] to not only be a showcase of artworks, but to act as a conversation facilitator, giving the project longevity beyond the original brief.

this place [of mine] became the perfect experiment in running a process like this within one location. The ambition is to continue gathering ideas from even more young people across the UK (and perhaps even further afield!), and presenting each new location with its own unique platform for users to engage with. this place [of mine] :grimsby is next on the list — coming 2023!