People Make Place
Strategy, brand, engagement and creative interventions on one of Bradford’s most overlooked high streets.
Project Details
Client: Bradford Metropolitan District Council Sector: / Community Engagement / Public Sector
Sector: Arts & Culture
Services: Branding, Environmental Design, Place Marketing, Report Design, Strategy & Research
Year: 2021 to 2022
People Make Place was a programme of creative high street interventions on Oak Lane in Manningham, Bradford, commissioned by Bradford City Council. Out of Place were founding members of the People Make Place collective, leading on brand identity, website, strategy, research and community engagement design across a twelve-month programme.
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People reached through the Patterns by the People banner programme on Oak Lane
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Local community groups, schools, businesses and organisations engaged across the programme
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Commissioned from Bradford and beyond across the programme's projects
Earned trust before anything else
Oak Lane in Manningham has a long history of community tension with Bradford Council, and the residents and businesses on the street knew it. When funding was secured from Bradford City Council in 2021 to deliver a creative high street programme, the first task wasn’t design. It was relationship-building.
We spent the first six to eight months of the project connecting directly with local residents, community groups and businesses, running Chai and Chats sessions, open drop-ins and door-to-door outreach before anything was designed or delivered. The community had historic trust issues with the council and the project needed to be seen as belonging to the street, not imposed on it. We designed a brand identity deliberately distinct from Bradford Council’s visual language, bright, bold and community-led, so that Oak Lane residents could connect with the project as their own.
We also had to navigate the additional challenge of working in the immediate aftermath of Covid, with community groups that hadn’t been active for two years, and a street that was still finding its feet.
The first task wasn't design. It was relationship-building.”
A programme built project by project
Once the groundwork was in place, the programme delivered a series of distinct creative interventions across the year, each developed with and for the Oak Lane community.
High Street Heroes partnered with Westbourne Primary School to run creative workshops exploring what it means to be a community hero in the modern context. Ninety students designed their own superhero, with twelve winning designs realised as life-size interactive totems installed on Oak Lane and later exhibited at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, reaching over 2,500 people.
The Shutter Gallery turned eight shop shutters along Oak Lane into a street art gallery, commissioning artists directly alongside business owners to develop bespoke briefs for each shutter. The gallery reached more than 30,000 people through passing engagement.
Patterns by the People ran workshops at the Meridian Centre and Millan Centre over four months, working with ESOL groups and local residents to develop geometric pattern designs that were printed as large-scale banners along Oak Lane. The banners reached more than 100,000 people through passing engagement alone.
Oak Lane in Bloom worked with local community groups to build and plant over 120 bespoke recycled planters, distributed freely to local residents and businesses. A Seed Library was established at Westbourne Community Hospital garden.
The Cinderella Story commissioned local artist Naureen Hafeez to create a series of large-format banners depicting Cinderella reimagined through Desi culture, installed along the street and featured on BBC Look North as part of Bradford’s build-up to UK City of Culture.
The project reinforced the firm belief we share about the potential Oak Lane has to become the epicentre of the local community. The project illustrated through its art how a common purpose can bring the Oak Lane community together.”
Closing on an event
The programme closed with a mini-documentary by local filmmaker Pishdaad Modaressi, screened at a community event and widely shared across Bradford, and the Oak Lane Art Map, a printed guide to the area designed by Out of Place in collaboration with Yorkshire artist Ellie Way, distributed to 500 locations across the district.
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