Whilst the world is facing not just a health crisis, but also a social emergency, We Make Places have been focussing our creative and collective energy on new solutions.   We’ve been considering how we can continue to support the residents we are already in the midst of co-design processes with and also the most vulnerable within the estates and communities in our region and beyond.

Whilst self-isolation and social-distancing are becoming the new instructions for our lives we and our many peers in the social enterprise and creative sectors have been working to devise new techniques that are not just healthier, but also more equitable, accessible and more social. We are doing this not just to assist our immediate or existing work, but for the future of all our communities.

Many of the individuals we work with are socially isolated already, by their income, their housing and their health, amongst other things. When the spread of COVID-19 finally wanes, and our current top-down instructions for living are relaxed, society will be left with a collective sense of isolation and our particular cohorts will be more vulnerable than ever. Some will bounce back and be yearning for the company of others, but many will have a heightened sense of anxiety, mistrust and lower self-confidence than previously. Undoubtedly, we will see many of those who were previously more confident and settled, struggling to come back from prolonged self-isolation and sudden economic instability.

Whilst, out of necessity, We Make Places develops our creative toolkit for continuing large scale community engagement without being in the same spaces, we expect it to bring us all long-term solutions and legacy projects within the neighbourhoods in which we work together.