UP Projects in partnership with Queen Mary University London commissioned designer Hefin Jones and Dr Tarek Virani from Creativeworks London’s Place Work Knowledge Research Strand to interrogate what community means to us in an ever-evolving city: Where are the informal cultural institutions that invite us to gather? And how do we tell the story of a community with multiple identities?
Hefin Jones’s research culminates in a film, Do You Feel Part of Something?, which brings together his research and interviews with the people of Redbridge in the form of short films which are then played back to them as a way to encourage further debate and discussion about what it means to belong to something or somewhere. Looking at specific groups as his case studies: a boxing gym, a wheelchair basketball team, and a marquetry club, gives insight into how participation in these micro-communities impacts people in both a personal and communal sense.
Jones’s research acted as a case study in Dr Tarek Virani’s paper, Micro-community engagement in London’s outer suburbs: Examining a practice-led approach to engaging with micro-communities in Redbridge, which queries the impact of current community engagement practices in a regeneration context. Looking specifically at Jones’s methodology during his research in Redbridge, Virani’s paper draws out how a practitioner might be able to achieve a greater understanding of micro-communities in a regeneration context.
You can read the paper below.
