We were invited by our collaborator to attend a meeting held in The Assembly, Bradford.

Among the people who attended were members of the Civic Society, Bradford City Council, local Geographers and Architects, Planners and local Residents. Members from the Bradford City Council Planning Transportation and highways service gave a presentation which communicated the city's goals, funding, proposed projects and aspirations for the future.

Upon some of the main points of discussion in the meeting included Forster Square Station & Square Development, and the City Center Transport plan & its relation to the wider highways strategy. We got a good idea of the current Bradford scene, a good insight on the city as a whole will contribute towards our development of the "City Village".

The meeting was a great opportunity for us to meet key people involved, our conversations at the meeting allowed us to gain a good idea of what Manchester School of Architecture students can provide. There was an energy of excitement towards the potential of student ideas being portrayed.

We left this meeting with ideas flowing, keen to develop a strategy for our outputs in the coming weeks.

Our collaborator is keen to host an event in the form of an exhibition, in which we can showcase the work we have collated over the period of the events weeks.

Bradford Civic Society are "interested in gathering people's positive thoughts on what their vision for the future of Bradford City Center is".

This event will be hosted on Thursday 7th of May, 2020
18:00- 21:00

This provides an opportunity for our ideas to be seen by local residents, members of the council and other stakeholders. This project is a real potential to make an impact on Bradford City Center, so we intend to make full use of the exhibition.

The venue for the exhibition is the Assembly, the same venue in which the meeting was held. We plan to dedicate some hours of our trip to Bradford during events week to working in the Assembly, in order to familiarize the students with the space that we will be designing an exhibition for.

As well as creating the work for the exhibition, we plan to include students in the process of designing the exhibition space, which includes the layout, materials needed, strategy for transport of work and materials, as well as potentially creating a video/animation that will be played in the exhibition space.

Social Impact

This is an important driver in the Bradford City Village project. A re imagined way to successfully combine the city and residential areas through design can ultimately affect the way people live. Bradford City Council stressed in previous meetings that the most important issue to tackle in Bradford, is that of young people moving away to find jobs, as they are not catered to in the existing residential schemes. This demographic seeks a fun and vibrant city life to be combined with their residential home, developing "Alternative Living" design ideas could pave the way for this to happen. This change in demographic will ultimately benefit the economy and enhance social life for the majority living in Bradford.

The process undertaken during the events project, from initially meeting the collaborator to the end output, could potentially result in a lasting impact. As students, we are keen to explore the different options that could contribute to this scheme in Bradford City Center, and aim to use design activities in order to develop and refine ideas for the "City Village" scheme.

Initial conversations with the collaborator and key stakeholders gave us a good idea of what they are keen to see in our proposals. We will work around these notes and the given information including the Council's goals, in order to create refined design ideas.

Our schemes will be communicated through different mediums and our collected work over the events period will be exhibited at an exhibition in Bradford Assembly, organised by our collaborator. We appreciate that this is a fantastic opportunity to really show our work effectively, aiming to spark conversations and to influence the future design decisions made in Bradford by key stakeholders. We have been asked to explore phase I, including initial designs to show the potential of Bradford City Center and we aim to achieve this through a final exhibition.

Hopefully our conveyed ideas will create a lasting impact in Bradford, one that values positive social impacts as well as other benefits, in terms of economy, diversity in demographics and ultimately, the perception of Bradford.