Jenny worked as part of the team at HERE+NOW on project People and Places: Make Leith Better. We engaged with local people about Leith as a place using our spinning ‘Place Standard’ wheel.  This physical moveable iteration of the Place Standard tool helped engage people in conversation about their local place, and build up a communal snapshot of how people feel about 14 different themes.  

As part of documenting the process, Jenny photographed the community engagement process and also created a short film (below) summarising the project:

HERE+NOW partnered with Leith Creative as part of the ‘People and Places: Make Leith Better’ project, to create a series of pop up events and curated conversations. These were done in conjunction with Leith Late ‘17 and Architecture Fringe ‘17. The events included creative mapping which identified creative hubs in Leith and North Edinburgh, such as St Margaret’s House. This is where HERE+NOW hosted their interactive exhibition and was the base point for their mobile ‘Place Standard’ wheel tour.

As part of the project, HERE+NOW offered an open invitation for people to join them and their giant mobile ‘Place Standard’ wheel on tour around Leith. Literally rolling through the streets and pausing at strategic locations along the way. The spinning wheel offers a live invitation of input using chalk from passers-by to slowly build up a visual picture of what people think about Leith, according to 14 themes. These include themes such as 'identity and belonging',  'feeling safe', and 'streets and spaces', as developed by The Scottish Government. Together these start to build a visual picture, similar to a spider-diagram, about how both 'Leithers' and non-Leithers feel about Leith as a place.