Earlier in the year, Make approached Su to take part in their Bootle Festival, leading the Spaces for Change workshop. The ‘Festival for Ideas’ aims to inspire local people to share ideas related to five themes – making and selling; food and growing; music and culture; health and wellbeing and spaces for change.

The walk fostered exciting discussions stimulated by local knowledge. We discussed the importance of grassroots organisations in defining the culture and identity of an area, and how this needed to be captured and mapped to inform development decisions.  Ideas spanned floating ‘museums’ of Bootle artefacts and pop-up outdoor theatre on disused land through to a micro brewery and simple solutions to pavement width and parking. Attendees shared both their aspirations for the neighbourhood and existing struggles with local decision making.

People have pitched their ideas and the winner will be announced at an online celebration event on Wednesday. A lovely Bootle hamper arrived yesterday full of lots of locally sourced goodies!  Thanks for inviting us and we look forward to sharing knowledge and connecting with groups over in Bootle as well as Make in the future.