Join us for Relearning Place: The Debate, a free online debate open to audiences across sectors and disciplines, which aims to create a safe space for discussion and debate and to challenge the status quo of how we shape our places and spaces. 

Using the theme of Relearning Place as our starting point, a diverse panel of speakers will offer their thoughts on what they think “relearning” can help us achieve in creating more inclusive, vibrant and sustainable places. Discussion will then open up to the whole virtual room.

How do we reconsider what we think we know about place and placemaking as we adapt to external factors of change?

How can we encourage people to think differently and to affect culture, policy and practice?

Do we need to unlearn to relearn

This event is the first in our public-facing elements of our 2022/23 WEdesign programme, Relearning Place. With the support of the Ove Arup Foundation, The Glass-House WEdesign programme combines both in-person and online public events, workshop sessions for the students on design engagement and collaborative placemaking, a series of think pieces from voices across sectors and disciplines and other elements. Relearning Place: The Debate will bring people from around the country together to kick-start the conversation.  

We’re bringing together 4 diverse placemakers for our first event in this year’s Relearning Place WEdesign event series. Our speakers, who will share their provocations on the theme of Relearning Place to kick-start an open discussion with attendees, are:

David Ubaka

David Ubaka is an architect and urban designer based in London, who has delivered projects across industries and sectors over the last 30 years. In 2012, he founded D.U.P Limited, an independent placemaking and development consultancy.

Erika Rushton

Erika Rushton is an artist and economist from the North-West. She founded Creative Economist, an organisation that specialises in creative and community entrepreneurship and our collective capacity to transform places through building locally-based economies.

Johanna Gibbons

Johanna Gibbons is a London-based landscape architect and founding partner of the landscape architecture studio J & L Gibbons, and Landscape Learn, a social enterprise which aims to create a wider understanding and appreciation about the landscapes we design, inhabit and influence.

Shankari Raj

Shankari is an architect, educator and agitator based in Bristol, who set up her practice Nudge to try to make the world a better place through architectural design.

This is a free event but places are limited. To secure your place, follow the ‘Book now’ button.

About the series

Change is a dynamic constant in our lives and through the Relearning Place event series we will explore the concept of relearning and how this approach might encourage people to think differently and to affect culture, policy and practice in design and placemaking. 

Through a series of online and in-person events, Relearning Place explores the role of communities in design and placemaking and how the recent changes in political, economic, socio-cultural and environmental influences are altering how we respond, relate to and adapt the places where we live, work and play.

So how do we reconsider what we think we know about place and placemaking as we adapt to external factors of change?

What do we have to unlearn to enable us to relearn

Is relearning a continual process for places?

Relearning Place is The Glass-House 2022/23 WEdesign series which combines free, interactive events and co-design activities taking place in person in Glasgow, Sheffield, London, Newcastle, with a range of online events and think pieces. 

To find out more about the whole series, visit our Relearning Place page on The Glass-House website.