A consortium led by The Junction BID, including a range of community organisations in Battersea, secured seed funding from the Mayor of London’s High Streets for All Challenge Fund for the initial stage of a project to enhance the environment in Clapham Junction (Battersea) for residents, visitors, businesses, and other organisations.
The Glass-House Community Led Design, a national charity that champions and enables public participation and leadership in design and placemaking, was brought in by The Junction BID and consortium partners to help them develop a strategy and action plan for their programme of walkabouts. To help capture and consolidate the group’s learning and ideas.
The aim of this first phase of the initiative was to use walkabouts and discussion groups to focus on a community-led examination of the key features of the Junction, and on the activities that take place within it. Through The Junction: Placemaking and Wayfinding Project, the consortium set out to understand The Junction’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges.
This involved exploring the physical and cultural heritage and infrastructure of The Junction, assessing the character of streetscape, public realm, heritage and
cultural assets. The group was also keen to look at the diverse activities that take place at The Junction during both the day and night time, and people’s perceptions
of them, in order to help inform and strengthen a future night time strategy for The Junction.
The project set out to build on the rich local history of social action among consortium partners and within the wider community, and to lay the foundations for a longer-term initiative to build a network of community-led and cross-sector collaborative action that could create space for conversation with creatives / individual artists and local businesses.
A total of 90 people were involved in the walks and talks, roughly half women and half men. Ages ranged from children in buggies and those being collected from
school, through to two groups of teenagers (24 in total), to a strong representation of people aged 50+. There was also a strong representation of ethnic minorities
(and a group undertaking ESOL classes), particularly among teenagers and mothers with young children. Two people were in wheelchairs. Community groups involved included the Battersea Society, Katherine Low Settlement, Providence House, What Next? Wandsworth, Waste Not Want Not, a Battersea nd Maysoule Road Community Group, as well as business members of the Clapham Junction BID.
With the news that Wandsworth Council is now proposing to produce a vision and masterplan for the Opportunity Area designated in the London Plan, and as interest in the potential for Community Improvement Districts grows, this project serves as a proof of concept for the value of engaging and activating the community in shaping the future of The Junction. [See also Wandsworth Local Plan (Jan’22), which KLS fed into.]
This report draws together the findings of The Junction: Placemaking and Wayfinding Project. It maps the activities carried out in October and November 2021, shares the consortium’s learning and sets out their key priorities and recommendations which have emerged through the activities to date. The Junction BID is considering how to take this work forward into 2022.
Download the report here: 2021.12.10_The Junction Placemaking _Main Report.pdf – Google Drive