Futurescapes connects local groups with our wider team of designers, researchers, techies and visionaries, to co-create new visions of Finsbury Park using immersive technology.

Crowd-Sourced Visions of the Future

Furtherfield disrupt and democratise arts and technology so that more people can be involved in the business of shaping their cultures and places. Our current focus is on ways to connect the governance and funding of culture to the communities that they serve.

We are currently developing a three year programme called Citizen Sci-Fi, in the heart of Finsbury Park where we have 2 venues: a gallery and a lab. Using the model of citizen science and citizen journalism we are crowdsourcing the imagination of park users and local community groups to create new visions and models of stewardship for public, urban green space.

Like many other public spaces, Finsbury Park has immense economic, social and natural value, yet there is a disconnect between the ‘owners’ of public space and the people that use (or should be) using them. Local councils have limited funds, the ‘superdiverse’ local population are not engaged in public consultations; and there are conflicts between park users and stakeholders.

Planning Together

Immersive models can be used as a tool for engagement through co-design, to discover how the council, park stakeholders including nearby property developers, and park users imagine its future and their involvement with it. Placemaking is recognised as a core part of regeneration, requiring a foundation of strong partnerships cutting across the public and private sectors, where social, cultural and ‘natural’ capital interleave to create stronger bonds and local identity.

We aim to co-design an immersive platform to facilitate the co-design of development in and around public spaces. It will engage with and directly benefit a number of stakeholders:

• Citizens: members of the public/park users (special interest groups e.g. older women’s group, gallery visitors, dog walkers, tourists…)
• Businesses: Thames Water, adjacent shops, cafes, local property developers, commercial fitness groups e.g. Military Fitness Group)
• Government (Haringey Council) as landowner, facility/service manager, adjacent authorities Islington and Hackney, planning authorities
• Creative industries professionals (architects, game designers, artists, filmmakers)

By coordinating and connecting Furtherfield’s international community of artists, techies and thinkers, and the groups that we work with in Finsbury Park, we have the opportunity to combine the powerful insights of grounded communities with experimental practitioners. We want to find a way to empower a long term collaboration across all these layers.

Futurescapes is an Audiences of the Future Design Foundations project, funded by Innovate UK (part of UK Research & Innovation)

Project Partners

Furtherfield
Golant Media Ventures
Wolf in Motion