Places Matter Travels the Super Slow Way

Places Matter has linked up with the Super Slow Way in East Lancashire to launch its free Design Review service for Community and Arts groups.

As part of its mission to promote the highest levels of design excellence in the public domain, Places Matter will forge a strategic relationship with Super Slow Way and undertake a series of free Design Reviews over the next couple of years as the proposals for the East Lancashire Linear Park emerge.

Richard Tracey, Places Matter Panel Manager, said “we are delighted to be able to make this offer to Super Slow Way. We have been looking for suitable schemes to launch our Community and Arts programme and it makes real sense to work with Super Slow Way over a longer period as it develops its ideas and thoughts for the linear park. Our design experts will provide a constructive critique for the work which BDP has been commissioned to prepare”.

The Super Slow Way is a cultural development programme that covers 20 miles of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal corridor stretching through East Lancashire from Blackburn in the west, through Hyndburn and Burnley, and ending in Pendle in the east.

Laurie Peake, Director, said “the Super Slow Way values and develops social spaces with communities where people can express their own cultural identities and celebrate their own everyday creativity. This offer from Places Matter will help us explore green space strategies and add heritage and landscape expertise to the way we approach our developing ideas for the linear park”.

As an added bonus, PLACED, a social enterprise that runs tailor made programmes to connect communities, decision makers, schools and business, will bring a cohort from their first Academy Alumni to join the programme, initially as observers. Jo Harrop, Director, added “this is a fabulous opportunity for our previous participants of the academy to engage with a live project and follow this through the process of design and delivery”.

BDP’s lead designer, James Millington, stressed the value of an independent assessment of their work. “Design Review is a tried and tested approach to getting an honest and impartial, constructive critique of our developing ideas”.

The Places Matter Community and Arts programme will launch today, 28 July, and hopes to add further projects in the coming year.