Getting creative with community engagement

Understanding the needs of a community starts with hearing its stories, a goal that shaped our work in Buxton town centre. Through a creative ask on Revitalising Buxton’s website and a series of engagement workshops, we gathered cherished memories, photographs, and aspirations from people across the community.  

These heartfelt contributions became the foundation for a special public display, designed with the help of local artist Mister Hope, to celebrate Buxton’s past, present, and future. In this blog, we’ll take you through the journey of how these shared stories brought the town together in a truly unique way.

Learn more about the Revitalising Buxton project here. 

As part of our community engagement, we made a creative appeal to the locals through the project's website, which not only tracks the progress of the project but also keeps the public informed about updates and upcoming events they may want to attend. The creative ask was to collect as many memories and photos from the community to help shape the story of Buxton town centre. We wanted to include as much input from the public as possible and learn as much as we could from them. In this research, we began to understand that the community wanted to be seen, understood and heard. As our work was based solely around the community, we wanted to find someone who knew the area and had a rooted connection to Buxton to help us create something to reflect everyone’s memories and keep it close to home.  

Creative display

Bringing memories to life  

Through an extensive community engagement programme across Buxton, we collected an incredible number of memories and perspectives from people of all age groups. Youth workshops were held with schoolchildren at Buxton and Leek College, additionally, we held stakeholder workshops and community drop-in events at various local venues around Buxton, such as the Grapevine Wellbeing Centre. By involving such a wide range of ages in our research, we ensured our insights reflected a diverse collection of experiences and thoughts about the future of Buxton town centre.  

Mister Hope

Local resident and artist, Mister Hope, had previously worked on a project for Buxton’s heritage action cultural programme. His illustrative style was the perfect fit for what we had in mind for the display, which captures individual stories while also looking towards the future of the Spring Gardens area in Buxton.  

Mister Hope in his studio

The unique memories we collected provided Mister Hope with a huge amount of inspiration for creating a vibrant, homely display. Each memory was transformed into a colorful tile that featured a playful cartoon version of the person alongside their story. The tiles also include drawings of Buxton landmarks with someone's hopes for the future and reflections on how the Spring Gardens has changed over the years. 32 tiles were completed and proudly displayed in one of the shopping centre’s windows for everyone to see.  

Buxton landmark tile

The community's positive response 

With the display in a prominent high street location, we received lots of amazing feedback from delighted locals, some recognising their characters and sharing photos of themselves posing alongside their tile. Councillor Damien Greenhalgh, Deputy Leader and Executive Councillor for Regeneration, Tourism and Leisure, praised Mister Hope and his design in the local media, saying: ‘Mister Hope has done a fantastic job of translating memories, aspirations and thoughts about Buxton’s future into this colorful, engaging display which is capturing the attention of people shopping and visiting the town centre.’   

We too have thoroughly enjoyed collaborating with a talented local artist on this display. It has been a fantastic way to unite the community while creatively showcasing public opinions. Our approach not only highlights our research in an engaging way but also brings recognition for High Peak Borough Council and the project. We look forward to incorporating similar initiatives into future projects to continue community connection and celebration.