This Must Be the Place is a three-year placemaking programme of research, artists residencies, and co-commissions working collaboratively with young people from Ebbsfleet.
Co-led by artists and young people aged 16-25, they will explore Ebbsfleet as it is built. Together they will consider innovative and radical placemaking ideas with partners including architects, designers, philosophers and policy makers, and share their research on what has worked locally, nationally and internationally. This process will feed into a series of new commissions and residencies, embedded in the city and community, connecting the histories and potential futures of the social, political, geographical and civic landscapes they live in.
At a pivotal moment in time, given the increased economic uncertainty and social isolation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, This Must Be the Place brings young people together and creates tangible opportunities for them to develop creative skills. Enabling them to ask questions, be playful, and to challenge and shape ideas connected to the design and build of the new city. Crucially, they will be involved in long-term thinking about the place they live, enabling them, and the wider community, to have a stake in elements of the design, development and governance of the city, fostering a deeper and more meaningful sense of home.
As the first new garden city for 100 years, the plans for Ebbsfleet are formidable, including creating up to 15,000 new homes, nine new schools, and seven new city-scale parks, by 2035. This Must Be the Place aims to explore the opportunities and challenges presented by this new town, and how these can be re-examined and countered through youth and art-led creative placemaking. The programme aims to develop new methodologies for research and placemaking with young people at its heart, informing national learning and creative placemaking models.
This Must Be the Place is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, and by Ebbsfleet Development Corporation.
Projects
Visit thismustbetheplaceebbsfleet.org to find out more about the project and get involved.
