I created a game about reinventing your high street a couple of years ago. Like any new method, it’s like solving a Rubik’s cube by rearranging existing processes. In our first workshop, we brought together people with different needs and those who work on the high street, and we started with a basic layout of a high street.
After everyone shared their reasons for being there — a diverse mix of individuals working to address neighbourhood issues and those eager to learn new methods and connect with others — I encouraged everyone to start drawing the various places and actors that populate a high street.
Not because I’m lazy, but because everyone’s high street is different, and what people define as a high street is different too — it can be the high street where you live, where you work, or even the oneyou grew up in.
That way, you get different high streets remixed into one. Of course, given the people living in London, where the workshop took place, there will be an urbanbias. It’s not meant to represent high streetsacross the country perfectly. Instead, it’s meant to get you thinking about the role of a librarian and a securityguard of a supermarket, pharmacist, and barista.
Some roles, like a community pharmacist, a library or a community champion, a commissioner wouldn’t bat an eyelid referring to, nor would a GP social prescribing.
How about people who aren’t based in a fixed space, who don’t have the recognised legitimacy to help people? What about the community warden walking up and down our streets, mixing with young and old alike? Who may know more about people’s issues than a council? What about a hairdresser who may know about people’s symptoms than a GP? What about a supermarket security guard who may know about the lives of people who sleep on the street than a homeless shelter?
Infrastructure for the high street
From this, we then looked at the infrastructure that could help get under the skin of the high street:
- What ambient data, such as football, Wi-Fi, or jogging data, could help understand people’s movements and interactions?
- What relationships do people working in chains have with the high street versus people working in independents?
- How could you influence the skills development of employees working on high streets to be more dementia-friendly, for example?
I then got people to visualise and include other types of actors that needn’t be buildings or people. People chose community cafes or supermarkets, but also a cyclist and a…duck! We also had places of worship, memorials, cycle lanes, buses and…air pollution.
What was most fascinating was when people acted out these behaviours as they moved about each other in the system. The duck became a powerful actor as it got people to interrogate how we use nature. The duck was, in theory, the only non-economic actor and wasn’t a threat to any other actors. Yet it was an economic asset, as a pond with ducks increases the value of a house nearby!
