Making it happen isn’t just a vision, it’s an act – an act of bringing people together through collaboration, formulating teams, distributing tasks, coordination, accountability and bringing ideas together and then creating a new reality. Making it happen is a process of community engagement, learning and individual development as well. It creates opportunities for gathering, socialization, and volunteerism, which have been shown to reduce psychological distress and depression.
Placemaking leaders follow the mantra that community is the expert. It’s true. A place is used and run by diverse groups of people at the same time, whether they are visible in the place like users, students etc or running it through different systems behind the desk like administration, staff etc. All are responsible for the success of the place somehow. Thus, their involvement in the redesign or remaking, which we call placemaking, is crucial.
Placemaking events are planned in such a way that it brings people together and put different ideas on the table and then formulating a design that serves all. This way the new place design doesn’t just belong to a set of individuals who decide on their own what to do with a place but rather group of different individuals who design the reality of their place.
The Placemaking Event in Punjab University College of Art & Design was organized by Peacemakers Pakistani in February 2019 with same strategy. An opening ceremony was followed by design competition workshop where students of Architecture Department formed groups based on categories and themes. A one day activity inspired them to put their ideas in front of placemaking team panel to decide the winner of design competition on the basis of creativity innovation and practicality as per context of place.
Lighter, quicker and cheaper ideas were brought into existence with help of students and some professionals. It was a great learning experience for all. It not only helped students to think and learn about their place but also to expand their vision about the future of their place. And it also helped admin and faculty to learn about the aspirations of their young students about their place. A few temporary solutions were replaced with permanent designs as a result of this placemaking event as well.
Here’s an insight to how we made it happen with hard work and lot of few days of fun and memories. The community engagement, lunches, and evening gupshup with chai will forever be cherrised by us as a gift of this community event. We are looking forward to more such events in Lahore and other parts of our country Pakistan. InshaAllah.
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