a centre for place-making
Click the links to find out about MADE's four main areas of work: Art & Culture, Communities, Design Quality and Education and four other special services. In each category you can see our current Projects or look at Case Studies of previous MADE work.
MADE provides services such as Design Review that add value to the work of local authority teams in planning, regeneration, housing and the public realm.
Working with MADE can help you work smarter, collaborate with other authorities and do more for less.
We all know that we are entering difficult times for local authority planning and regeneration teams. Budgets are being cut and staff teams reduced, while the localism agenda will be presenting new challenges. With regional strategies abolished local authorities are being told, ‘think for yourself’.
With investors even harder to find, we cannot afford to give up on place-making. Only the best quality locations will prosper and attract investors, visitors and shoppers.
A new offer from MADE
At MADE we have been talking to heads of planning and regeneration across the West Midlands. We have been finding out about how you see the future and discussing what sort of support you would find most useful. We know the future will be local so we have redesigned our services to support local planning. We know that budgets will be tight so we have designed our services to be cost effective.
MADE's offer is based on best practice: collaboration around planning and design in Southern Staffordshire and the Black Country: local design initiatives in Birmingham, Nottingham, North West Leicestershire and North Staffordshire.
We think the future lies in local design quality initiatives, sometimes within an individual local authority, more often as collaboration between adjacent councils who would shape and ‘own’ the programme. An agreed programme of measures can transform planning and regeneration culture and send out a clear signal to developers and designers. MADE will support local authorities to deliver these initiatives. A typical local design quality initiative might include:
A local design review panel
Design review is a tried and tested way to provide an independent quality-focussed view on proposed developments. It improves schemes at an early stage, verifies the quality of more challenging designs, acts as an arbiter when opinions are mixed. Local panels, based on voluntary input from local professionals, can be cost-effective. Involvement in properly managed local panels is tremendous CPD for local professionals, in itself helping to improve design culture in the area. However local authorities with local panels tell us they sometimes experience difficulties maintaining quality and impartiality. MADE can provide local panels with an independent professional chair, undertake recruitment, training and briefing, and provide a secretariat and quality control to ensure all panellists are contributing appropriately.
Advice, facilitation and training
We will maintain and refresh our expert panel of architects and urban designers, landscape architects and public art consultants, engineers and transport planners, regeneration, sustainability and community engagement experts. As part of a local initiative, we would provide an agreed number of days of expert for advice with strategic, design and procurement challenges. This could be used to facilitate workshops to tackle particular issues or provide officer and member training.
Guidance
The development of design guidance and standards may well form part of an agreed design initiative. Combined with awareness-raising, training and other measures, design guidance can send out positive signals to developers that you mean business when it comes to design quality. Using our expert panel, MADE can support the in-house production of guidance, undertake the production of guidance ourselves or act as a ‘client’s friend’ when procuring consultants to do the job.
Site analysis and briefs
Local authorities are telling us how important site briefs or masterplans are as proposals come forward for large residential or other schemes. MADE can support the production of site briefs and masterplans, using our expert panel. Support could be in the form of a simple project initiation workshop, or more substantial support for the process.
Community engagement
With the Localism Bill imminent we are all going to have to raise our game on community involvement in planning. MADE has years of experience of innovative engagement of local people and businesses, and a number of specialists on our expert panel.
Networking
At MADE we already organise the Building for Life assessors network. Networks like this are a powerful and cost-effective way for key officers to share good practice, solve problems and keep up-to-date.
Awards
MADE has supported design award schemes for Wychavon and the Southern Staffordshire Partnership. Combined with other measures, these are a positive way to signal a commitment to design quality.
Public programmes
Where MADE is supporting a local design initiative we will be looking to add value through lecture programmes and exhibitions to reinforce design culture. These will be delivered with support from the private sector, and in partnership with local universities, art galleries, civic and professional bodies.
Taken together these measures can produce real synergies so the sum is greater than the parts. Expert panel advice can be used to follow-up on tricky design review cases. Design review can inform local guidance and training. Exhibitions can be organised and awards presented to the best schemes. Networks can bring together the public and private sector to work for design excellence.
The nature of each local design initiative would be agreed between the local authorities involved and MADE. We estimate the cost of MADE supporting a local initiative providing a typical set of measures at less than £10,000 for each district council and less than £15,000 for unitary authorities. For local authorities who cannot afford a full-time specialist urban design officer (or cannot afford a second one) this represents about a third of the cost. Some of this cost may be recovered through charges for pre-application advice.
Significant schemes deserve high level expertise from a fully-professional design review panel. We have taken steps to make our main panel more cost effective, bringing the cost of reviewing each scheme down to less than £900. Our panel members work at well below their normal day rates, so design review represents an extraordinary opportunity to get expert advice which would cost thousands of pounds if procured independently. Local authorities might be able build these costs into the budget of large projects or through pre-application consultation charges.
For smaller schemes or schemes which have been already reviewed once and are returning with revisions, a desk review can be undertaken for less than £500.
We are currently working with Wyre Forest District Council to produce a masterplan for the Churchfields area of Kidderminster. The project is supported by the Homes and Communities Agency. Wyre Forest felt that commissioning a large consultancy firm would not provide good value for money and would lead to a loss of control over the process. Instead, the council is working with MADE to procure a mix of relevant expertise from our expert panel and capacity through a temporary design studio staffed by unemployed graduates. This leaves the local authority officers as project managers, building internal capacity and allowing for greater flexibility as the project progresses.
This model of flexible procurement could be used for competitions, production of design guidance and other major pieces of work. Where use of an outside consultant is deemed appropriate, MADE can act as a ‘client’s friend’, supporting brief-writing and selection to ensure value-for-money and the best design outcome.
Before embarking on a major planning or regeneration project, talk to MADE about how we can support you. It might be a longer-term relationship, as with Wyre Forest, or a series of interventions at key points to keep the project on track and ensure quality: a kick-off scoping workshop, a couple of design reviews, workshops looking at particular issues, a community consultation event.
To discuss how you might work with MADE in the future contact David Tittle, Chief Executive on 0121 348 7980 or david@made.org.uk
