A New Town Centre Vision Built on Utopian Heritage and Digital Technologies
Context
Basildon was the first of the post-war ‘New Towns’, noted for plentiful green space and bold modernist architecture. The town centre is undergoing a period of change, prompted by a new masterplan that will see the building of a new cinema, a new site for South Essex College and a new market in the main civic square. The town centre is overseen by BTCM, a consortium of landowners including the owners of the Eastgate shopping centre and Basildon Borough Council.
Futurecity was asked to
Develop a new narrative to lead the rejuvenation of a town centre facing challenges to its retail sector from large district competitors and online retail. Immediate priorities included activating the public realm to drive additional footfall and kick-starting the town centre’s fledgling evening economy. A strategy was needed that would draw together key town stakeholders through an incremental, deliverable programme that would complement and support the ‘big moves’ of the masterplan.
How we delivered
Our cultural research identifed sector strengths in the creative digital economy within the borough. These were combined with Basildon’s utopian heritage to form a vision for the town centre as a culturally democratic digital creative district. A provisional brand ‘BasildON’ was developed by Hat-Trick Design to signify how a new cultural energy would be ‘switching on’ the town centre.
A team of artists and cultural entrepreneurs were introduced to stakeholders who could take the vision, principles and proposals of the cultural strategy and enact them from day one. A governance structure to oversee this drew upon the strengths of civic, commercial and cultural partners with recommendations for funding sources that could help seed cultural activity.
An 8-year programme of projects and partnerships provided a roadmap for stakeholders to incrementally grow cultural activation, attract creative enterprise, and improve the public realm of the town centre.
Project Legacy
Creative practice Things Made Public were engaged by the town team to deliver cultural activation across public realm, pop-up shops and events.
A cultural consortium, BasildON, was formed with representatives of local authority, commercial sector, developers, cultural and community leaders.
Together these developed a £1.2m application to the Arts Council People & Places. A total of £750,000 match support for the fund was pledged by commercial, public and academic stakeholders.
In August 2019, the Arts Council announced that BasildON would receive the full requested amount to deliver a programme based on Futurecity’s Cultural Placemaking Strategy.
Press Release
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