Yasmin Ali

After lunch, delegates separated into four parallel workshops working along themes of Neighbourhoods as places of learning, work, living, and as part of the wider city vision. These workshops built upon, extended and questioned the themes introduced in the morning's talks. I attended 'How do Neighbourhoods Learn?', an interactive workshop led jointly by Lesley Thomson, Director of Liddell Thomson, and Prof. Janice Kirkpatrick, Creative Director of Graven Images. The workshop was facilitated and supported by Sam Cassells of A+DS. We were informed by pre-recorded footage of video research of a series of Vox Pops style interviews with members of the public, which set the scene for groupwork answering the same sets of questions, and invited to respond and reflect to our collective results. The responses were interesting in that we found we were able to inform the debate onurban issues without asking or specifying questions directly related to urbanism, thereby highlighting a valuable approach to collection of qualitative work. The key lesson learned was that communities need self-awareness to foster a learning culture and develop a realistic and tangible identity and sense of place from which to build upon.

The afteroon rounded off with the Keynote Address from AoU Academician Angus Gavin, Head of Solidere Consulting, speaking of their substantial urban redevelopment strategy and its enactment in Central Beirut, including the superimposition of an urban grid on land reclaimed for large-scale dockland redevelopment. The inference was that Glasgow and Beirut are not that alien to each other: each is struggling with waterfront regeneration, finding a new sense of purpose in a post-industrial context, and a new identity removed from former glory as a centre of an empire, and a major shipping destination.

//See also separate Awards & Orientation coverage

RIAS Convention met 13-15th May 2011 also in Glasgow - coverage to follow

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