About three weeks ago we (MA Design group) went down to Woodlane to join the MA Graphics group for week long brainstorming session about/for Dott Cornwall. Dott is an initiative which was set up in 2007, initially working in the North East of England with areas of the community which were deprived. The idea is that with money supplied by the EU to Dott, Dott goes into the community to discover where the money can be best spent, and tailors projects to the needs of the locals, instead of rolling out 'standard' projects, which have been put together by one person and sold to many. Dott in it's idealism (merely for the fact that this is often a more complicated scenario than it first seems) is about truly serving the needs of the community. When it becomes apparent that many community projects are not community lead and instead governed by people totally unrelated and potentially uninterested to the area, Dott becomes a genuine gift.
Dott is comprised as a series of designers, working toward strategic solutions for community sustainability. The lady that came and spoke to us was the Dott programme director, Andrea Soidmok. She explained how Dott had been chosen by the EU and European Development Fund to help out in Cornwall, bringing design thinking to Cornwall, this being one of the most deprived counties in the EU. The end result is about presenting and implementing ideas in conjunction with government and local authorities, which provide benefit back to the community. Many of their previous and current project can be found here http://www.dottcornwall.com/
In the process we were asked to come up with inspiring ideas to benefit the community as well ideas that would help to sustain and develop growth. It was a really challenging process, and the first issue was to understand the problem. We spent the first day in our groups coming up with incentives that we thought would be beneficial to Cornwall working with ideas of economy and community, green initiatives, young people, and old people. Each of the groups were able to focus in on certain topics and explore options available within these areas.
Things ranging from ‘green tokens’, reducing your carbon footprint in exchange for credits.. to new industry links with local employers so that school leavers would be able to walk straight from school into paid work. As well as this incentives about ways to draw in new businesses to the area, and working with the local communities to find solutions to persistent problems.
The second day we did a reccy of some of the towns in Cornwall, took photos and amid discussions made conclusions about why we felt Cornwall was so poor. Interestingly one of the things that seemed to crop up again and again was the proliferation of second home owners within the county and how this particular situation adversely affects the Cornish people, having much more impact on local economy than just affecting the price of houses.
Although there are many things that could effectively improve the situation in Cornwall, nothing major can change over night and to effect many of the changes we spoke about there would need to be major government input and policy change– for example: to reduce the number of people buying holiday homes would mean enabling people locally to buy their homes at a relative market price instead of an inflated one.
Pretty pictures of Cornwall, slightly unrelated.
Beach with fishing boats and beautiful views
St Michaels Mount, with kite surfers
Fishing boat in Newlyn, just next to Penzance
Small fishing village where majority of homes are owned by second home owners
Robinson's Shaft in Camborne central to the proposed Heartlands regeneration project.
Derelict building, near to the Robinsons Shaft.
Plans for a playground that sends energy to the National Grid. I think that this is one of many projects that will be appearing in Cornwall over the next year, you can follow Dott on Twitter too. It will be exciting to see what happens, not only for Cornwall, but from a design point of view as well. What will Dott do and how will they go about tackling the problems that exist in Cornwall?
