Aim:
The project's goal was to co-create a collaborative examination of Govanhill's future over the next five to 10 years. The future discussed matters to those who are connected to and live in Govanhill in some way.
This inquiry required us to understand Govanhill (via desk research and fieldwork), identify and engage with critical stakeholders, and develop, curate, and organise collaborative engagements with key Govanhill organisations and individuals.
The expected outcomes included a map of care and a vision for the future of Govanhill as an area keeping in mind its people, spaces and places.
Govanhill is a neighbourhood in Glasgow's southside. Over 40% of local people are from ethnic minorities, and over 32 languages are spoken in Govanhill, making it Scotland's most ethnically diverse neighbourhood. The media portrayed it as a "deficient and intensive neighbourhood," although there are dozens of energetic organisations working in the area to enhance the environment, address housing issues, promote possibilities, and so on. People are helping to celebrate the variety of the community. As part of our initiative, we will work with local residents and organisations to co-design the future of Govanhill over the next 5-10 years. We seek to enable the community to create a meaningful future for themselves through this approach.
Care:
We believe that wellbeing, safe space, respect, and a sense of security should all be included in the definition of care for persons in Govanhill, as these are all important aspects of individual life quality. Care is something that makes people feel empowered and safe when they do not have to rely on external agents to sustain their ecosystem.
Deprived:
According to our findings, several factors such as overcrowding in houses, fly-tipping, a lack of appropriate green spaces, and income deprivation have detrimental consequences for Govanhill inhabitants. Broadly speaking, these factors can be looked at as a few of the main reasons why this area is considered to be deprived in comparison with several other areas in Glasgow.
Future:
Creating a vision for a better future for a community or a place need not necessarily mean working toward “fixing” the problems that highlight themselves. In our case, we strived to devise a plan and tool that could help empower the community themselves to collectively envision a better future with the help and support of the various beautiful facets of their people and spaces.
RESEARCH PHASE
Problem Statement:
How might we devise a map of care and future vision for the people of Govanhill keeping in mind their assets and the strengths of the community?
Approach:
The approach for this project started as asset-based where we planned on utilising the positive factors that the community and the place have and trying to use that as a basis to build our vision for the future and betterment of the community.
We started with broad research via the internet and clustered a lot of data regarding Govanhill. As we did that, I instantly started identifying common themes and patterns in the information gathered. This was followed by interviews with key stakeholders as well as our first-hand experience discovering the area as visitors.
Methods/Principles followed:
The main method used was to follow an asset-based approach. Dealing with a project which involved community engagement meant that we had to repeatedly zoom in and out of the context at every step of the way, we referred to various academic texts and had a lot of specific lectures that helped us understand this method of practice better. Some of the main texts we referred to were; “Beyond Net Zero: A Systemic Design Approach”, “Design for Care: by Peter Jones H. Jones” and “Advancing Asset Based Practice: Engagement, Ownership and Outcomes in Participatory Design; by Cara Broadley.” I believe these provided us with a very important understanding of what to expect in a practice like this and how to tackle different situations that might occur.
9 MAIN FACTORS IDENTIFIED
1. Health:
Access to primary health care has been hampered by language and cultural barriers. While a lack of facilities in housing and on the street has resulted in fly-tipping and overflowing bins, resulting in rat infestations, eventually hurting the neighbourhood's mental and physical health.
2. Food:
The area's diversified food culture has given it a distinct cultural identity, although the sector is experiencing growing problems. food insecurity, and the changing culture of younger immigrant generations.
3. Housing:
Govanhill has a long history of opposing modernization. Some of the tenements are even on the National Register of Historic Places. However, as a result, many homes are not always fit for modern living, as they lack essential facilities, waste disposal, and insulation. This implies a significant financial commitment. This, combined with rising gasoline prices, gentrification, and a shortage of affordable housing, is driving up rental and purchase prices. In addition, the area has a large disparity between single occupancy and overcrowding, both of which are higher than the national average. Rogue landlords also mean that parts of the market are insecure, which is bad for residents.
4. Language:
Between 30 and 80 languages are spoken in Govanhill. It is thus one of Europe's most diversified regions. This can, however, create significant impediments to front-line treatment, community organisations, and even private enterprises. More computer translators are needed, as well as stronger representation in local government, health care, and enterprises.
5. Youth:
The population of Govanhill Hill is among Glasgow's youngest. People aged 0 to 15 years old are 10% higher than the Scottish average. Young persons in training, education, or employment are 23% over the national average; nonetheless, income deprivation is highest among that age group, and young offenders are three times the national rate. There is a lack of organisations that cater to this group, and the local youth club is overcrowded.
6. Sustainability:
Numerous businesses and organisations have sustainable policies, and there are many sustainable businesses. There is a lack of a unified and consistent policy that can bring all parties together.
7. Infrastructure and Spaces:
There is an imbalance in the area's infrastructure. While public transportation (trains, buses, and the construction of new bike lanes) makes Govanhill accessible, rubbish disposal remains a problem. There is a severe scarcity of green safe areas and public amenities. And harmful to the area.
8. Local Government and Budgets:
Budgets have to stretch further than they have in the past decade, especially with Brexit, covid, and sky-high inflation. This means that any funding must be done in a holistic manner, with many aims that can have the greatest influence on the community.
9. The impacts of Covid-19 and Brexit:
Both Brexit and Covid have had a significant impact on Govanhill's economy in recent years. While Brexit has resulted in an inflow of Roma people. Many truck drivers, construction workers, and manual labourers have departed. Inducing an increase in labour demand and prices. Many businesses and organisations' bottom lines are being directly impacted. Corona has wreaked havoc on the private sector and health care. "Corona was difficult for everyone, but especially so for some." It had a negative impact on the community's more venerable members. And now is the time to refocus on these issues, putting health and wellness at the forefront of the conversation.
Stakeholder Map:
This map(Fig. 9), when zoomed in, can be broken down into various pieces that explain our understanding of the correlation between the various organisations and people of the Govanhill area and how they function. This also acts as a resource map when we place different components in the centre of our focus and build the correlations around them.
INSIGHTS
1. Using language as an asset rather than a disadvantage
2. Imbalance in infrastructure and spaces available
3. Designing for “Behind the walls/ facades”
4. Nurturing what the community already has as a way of preserving quality and identities
5. Developing creative approaches to empowering the community that is already very active
Part of the brief asked for us to propose a “map of care” with layers of organisations, people, places and drivers. It was clear, that because of the project's intricacy, there are numerous organisations. Languages, communities within communities. We decided to use perspex layers to physically set out our map. To see how each layer is interconnected with the others. After that, we created a preliminary sketch. Which you can see here as well.
As shown in the figure, the Map of Care consists of 4 main layers, the private sector, the government, the organisations of Govanhill and most importantly, the people.
People:
This consists of students, ethnic minorities, citizens, refugees and immigrants, working non-residents and visitors. These are the main groups of people who contribute to all the activities and the economy of Govanhill as a whole.
Organisations:
As seen in the map, and the stakeholder map above (Fig: ) the organisations of Govanhill include the NHS, Charities, Schools, the Housing Association, community interest organisations and other health and wellbeing care centres. These are very essential as they are not only service providers of the area but vastly provide jobs to the people. Along with this, a lot of local stores that fall under this category are ethnically diverse in their products, produce and workforce. This adds to the very celebrated diversity and multicultural fabric of Govanhill.
Government / Council:
This layer includes the Scottish Government, the local council, the UK Government and the City of Glasgow which falls high in the hierarchy of the functioning of an area. Not only are these responsible for various services but also in charge of a lot of permits and policies made that directly affect the residents of this place.
Private Sector:
This layer consists of Independent stores, retail chains, various service providers and specialist food producers. In most cases, these are the most popular choices when the residents have any immediate needs and are widely trusted by the locals.
MOTIVATION
What:
Primary: Tangible goals that could be addressed in the scope of this project and that addressed the brief accurately.
- Utilise assets of Govanhill for its betterment (multicultural/artistic community)
- Communicating the positive side of the community
- Focusing on the Overcrowding problem of the housing system
- Increase in the frequency of waste collection
Secondary: Factors that need to be addressed but are secondary goals that can be dealt with after the main foundation of a future plan is laid out.
- Developing more green spaces in Govanhill
- Housing problem - mainly caused by overcrowding
- More cafes and businesses providing interventions that work towards language support and volunteer-based coaching
- Addressing the housing crisis by reducing the rent to inturn attracts additional student and artist population
- Attracting more people to Govahill who will appreciate the cultural diversity of the place using platforms like the Greater Govanhill Magazine
Tertiary Goals: These were needs identified that do not fit the scope of the project given the time and resources and nature of the project. These are long-term and higher-level goals.
- Addressing fuel security
- Addressing the brain drain
- The problem rising of residents not being able to afford proper heating systems.
- Working with policies that address the rent cap, etc.
Why we focused on Stories:
The main highlight of all our discussions and aims and motivations was that we needed more stories from the residents of Govanhill. Apart from that, we needed to gather and learn about their lived experiences in order to add depth and value to not only our research but to the outcome that we aimed to offer by the end of this project.
WORKSHOP
We aimed to identify the major lived experiences of residents and their interactions with various organisations when developing our workshop. The goal was to discover and understand people's stories and the connections they formed between the layers of the care map. This sparked our idea for a workshop tool that might (a) help us better understand the roles organisations play in residents' lives and (b) assist us to understand the impact such organisations have on the community by listening to residents' tales.
Trial Workshop:
We began by testing our tool and workshop with Service Design and Citizenship Design students, gaining valuable feedback on how the workshop would operate and the issues we would encounter. The wording we utilised was one of the most difficult issues to work with. The essential takeaway was to keep things simple. Not only did we build a workshop tool, but we also focused on eliciting tales and lived experiences. It was also beneficial to comprehend how the workshop's timing and layering affected the impact. We must ensure that what we have built is adaptive to the participants and that there is a clear and unambiguous method.
Final Workshop:
The final workshop taught us some fascinating things. For starters, it has been proven that talking to locals directly provides greater knowledge of real-life lived experiences. You can actually dive deeper into understanding those experiences, pain areas, and moments of the invention if you employ a well-designed application. When dealing with matters like community, the community in which you reside, you must recognise and expect emotional responses, especially when competing viewpoints are expressed. It was also critical to concentrate on the workshop's outcome rather than the process; we needed to learn from real experiences.
The workshop brought to light some significant challenges that we had previously neglected. For example, religious establishments represent one of the most essential connections between the layers that we had missed because Govanhill is an exceptionally varied community, which also implies religiously diverse. It's also interesting to note how some aspects of the community were formerly viewed as wholly different entities, such as major local chains and local services like the post office and library, which operated in parallel to the community but were not necessarily active members. This gave us a lot of information, but the two most significant ones are the ones we'll be focusing on at work.
Workshop Insights:
To begin, how could we better link and interact with these institutions, such as private and large businesses, and local services, for the sake of the community? Secondly, everyone who is related to Govanhill has a rich history and stories to tell. Anyone who knew Govanhill could tell you a tale.
How could we ensure that those stories were not forgotten? Especially given how quickly the community is changing. Is there a way for such stories to have a positive impact on the future?
FINAL OUTCOME: A MAP OF STORIES
Our map of stories is a way of using the rich assets provided by the people and spaces of Govanhill as a strong base for building a vision for the future rather than focussing on the lesser fortunate aspects in a negative light.
Why Stories?
We decided to focus on stories as every conversation we had about aspirations or visions for the future always seemed to link back to past incidents and present experiences and stories. This inspired us to use the very strong history and stories that made it - as a foundation and building blocks to envision a stronger future that included the aspirations and needs of the residents. This helps the change to not only be personal to the people but also form organically without any external intervention or interruption to what they do as a community.
Yellow Circles:
From 1900 through 2020, we listed all of the major events that impacted Govanhill in chronological order. The Scottish Government's primary priorities from 2020 to 2045 were then listed, with a focus on the next five to ten years.
White Circles:
We then chose major stories about organisations, structures, and key people in the neighbourhood, as well as immediate potential difficulties we knew the area would face in the months and years ahead, such as heightened racial tensions, a potential inflow of refugees, and others.
Pink Circles and Green Circles:
We identified things that we are certain are currently occurring. Inflation, fuel and digital poverty, the reopening of the baths, or the lease renewal of milk cafes are all examples.
Blue Circles and Orange Circles:
We also highlight potential concepts that align with current government-supported projects. We've given some suggestions that we feel will assist him in addressing some of the problems and meeting the government's sustainability goals. To name a few, education and healthcare.
MAP OF STORIES
This is our comprehensive map of care, which highlights key themes like housing, immigration, and LGBTQ+, as well as how they connect.
The Example:
The narrative of Govanhill Baths is used as an example, beginning with its completion in 1912. You can see the additional domains that bathing currently influences and how these areas can shape future policies and plans in the modern incarnation. The aim is that this map should be regularly updated by community leaders and organisers, allowing organisations to better understand and improve their influence in the neighbourhood while also ensuring that citizens' lived experiences are taken into account.
This project was done in collaboration with Hari Greenough, Jiongtao Tu, Ruoxue Yang and Yi Han.
