image: Farrells
Futurecity was appointed to develop the Heritage & Culture Blueprint for the Wakefield City Centre Masterplan as part of the design team led by Farrells Architects. The Masterplan provides a strategic framework for the city centre and provides a guide to physical development and economic growth.
Wakefield’s cultural credentials are well established and highly respected – not only is the district home to two Art Fund Prize winning institutions – Yorkshire Sculpture Park and The Hepworth Wakefield – but it’s also home to nationally significant institutions such as the Theatre Royal Wakefield, the National Coal Mining Museum, and a wide range of other cultural and heritage organisations. Wakefield’s cultural strength is very much in the sum of its many parts – from visual arts to performing arts to heritage, a growing annual programme of events and the popular Artwalk Wakefield – underpinned by a residential community passionate about the city’s creative and cultural industries.
The Masterplan was developed to support and uplift the city’s current cultural offer – creating a central hub for cultural use of vacant buildings, new provision for cultural education and an improved public realm that creates better connectivity between cultural assets and provides new spaces for activations.
The Heritage and Culture Blueprint sets out a series of projects and recommendations that seek to celebrate and unify Wakefield’s heritage and cultural offer and animate the build environment, especially the public realm, through creative interventions. The Masterplan proposed the adaptive reuse of historic sites and buildings as additional provision for creative workspace, exhibition and new cultural industries focussed further education programmes that will help support Wakefield’s next-gen creative community. The public realm projects set out a plan that will deliver a unique environment and place identity to the City Centre, activating key gateways and improving the pedestrian experience to encourage exploration and discovery.
image: Farrells
image: Farrells
image: Gaia, Wakefield Cathedral, CC-BY-SA 2.0 by Stephen Craven