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Blackpool Participatory Illumination Hub

Part 2 Project 2023
Zhusong Tee
Oxford Brookes University Oxford | UK
This radical project, which is communally owned by a propositional Central Drive Community Land Trust, seeks to nurture creative talent of local artists and to respond to the threat of gentrification by top-down redevelopments. It challenges the existing consumption-based tourism economy in Blackpool by transforming the existing asset of ‘Blackpool Illumination’ into a regenerative form of participatory illumination design based on a time-banking mechanism whereby tourists and community get involved towards community wealth-building. The embodiment of tactical urbanism means that the project was conceived collaboratively based on the voice of the local community through Central Drive Urban Room. Continuous material scarcity and the creative energy from various stakeholders allow the project to adopt the methodologies of material salvation and reuse from dense Blackpool town to thrive within planetary boundaries. This bottom-up initiative means that change happens quickly and experimentally to revitalise the deprived Blackpool Central Drive region and beyond through making, designing and celebrating biobased illuminations on deprived areas throughout Blackpool to draw attention of key decision makers towards co-designing a regenerative post-Anthropocene scenario.

Zhusong Tee

Tutor(s)
Jason Coleman
Mellisa Kinnear
Alex Towler
Tamara Khan
2023
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