During my time as Co-Founder/Director of HERE+NOW I led a project re-imagining Rodney St tunnel. This involved working with local neighbourhood groups and partners to transform the former railway tunnel at Rodney St, in Canonmills, Edinburgh, giving it a new lease of life as home to an open air public community photography exhibition. The exhibition was developed, built and co-created with local stakeholders with the aim of acting as a catalyst to kickstart local regeneration and build social capital in the neighbourhood.  

The project won a Regional Award for Scotland as part of the Planning and Placemaking Awards 2016, and both the Regeneration and Chairman's Award 2016 as part of the Scottish Design Awards.

From 24th September 2015, this month-long outdoor photography exhibition was open in this unique outdoor tunnel location, featuring photographs from local individuals in the four twinned City Link Festival cities - Edinburgh, Copenhagen, Istanbul and Hamburg as part of the Hold Me Dear project.   

Inspiration for this outdoor exhibition came from previous community engagement in the Canonmills neighbourhood by HERE+NOW earlier in 2015, where innovative engagement techniques including a ‘PEP Talk’ were used to develop a ‘community brief’ for neighbourhood regeneration. Rodney Street tunnel was identified by local residents, businesses and organisations as a perfect initial catalyst site that could be transformed from a ‘scary tunnel’ into a creative destination along the cycle path.  Based on this community appetite for change, HERE+NOW instigated the Hold Me Dear exhibition in Rodney St tunnel as a pilot project to inspire, bring local stakeholders together around a key neighbourhood space, and together catalyse further action and regeneration using a bottom-up met with top-down approach.

The exhibition was open 24 hours a day for one month.  The launch event invited people from the local neighbourhood, broader Edinburgh city and international guests to bring a picnic and come together for a series of talks from partner organisations about other inspiring regeneration projects, live music from Jazz Danmark, a free bike maintenance workshop from Grease Monkey Cycles, live mural painting from local artists, and free cycle tours of the local area and cultural venues as part of City Link Festival thanks to MyAdventure and Sustrans.  

The “Hold Me Dear: Four Cities, [Extra]ordinary Places” exhibition offered a chance for local people to share the places they treasure in their city through an open call to submit photographs and stories behind the places that have personal meaning to them, beyond the usual tourist landmarks. Selected images were printed for the Rodney Street tunnel exhibition with all showcased on the Hold Me Dear website.  You can view the gallery of photos submitted here.

More information about the project is available on the HERE+NOW website or you can contact me.