Meanwhile Use
The Meanwhile Use project was initiated to support imaginative projects to occupy vacant spaces in the city centre. It allowed such projects to have a home, rent free, and provided an amazing opportunity for pop-up, experimentation and testing of ideas.
Studies and reports highlight a need to diversify the high street, moving away from a reliance on retail, in order to truly reinvent our town centres for a sustainable future. The high street has also been heavily impacted by the pandemic leading to an increase in vacant units and evidence that indicates consumer buying habits may be permanently changed.
Plymouth Culture worked in partnership with Plymouth City Council, the City Centre Company and Vacancy Atlas to support imaginative projects that occupied vacant spaces in the city centre through a meanwhile use model. Those projects tested the challenges and opportunities to integrate such model as an enabling mechanism into high street revitalisation plans.
The Meanwhile Use project run in Plymouth’s City Centre from March 2022 to December 2023, through the High Streets Heritage Action Zone (HSHAZ) and Interreg C- Care project funds, and resulted in 17 case studies that enabled us to better understand our city property landscape and the barriers to reform.
Watch the video below to hear how the project has impacted creatives, projects and the people of our city!
THE PROJECTS
You can learn more about some of the case studies through the videos below:
RESOURCES
The programme also produced valuable resources that you’re free to download below. We hope those guides will help more Meanwhile Use projects in the future, as creativity thrives in our high street spaces.
