What has LOOK! St Albans done?
Early Success
The original City Centre Steering Group (which has subsequently evolved into the LOOK! St Albans Representatives’ Group) invited the Prince’s Foundation for Building Community to facilitate a community planning and design event as a means of developing design codes and general design guidelines for St Albans city centre.
The participation of the Prince’s Foundation was funded by a grant from the Department for Communities and Local Government for ‘Communities and Neighbourhoods in Planning’, with incidental expenses (publicity, room hire, etc.) covered by contributions from the supporting local organisations.
The workshops were well attended and enthusiastically supported by individuals and associations from all parts of the community. The resulting co-authored Report and design codes were well received.
We asked the community three questions;
- What is a good city centre made of?
- What do we want more of in St Albans city centre?
- What are the design features in existing buildings and spaces that could well shape a confident 21st century city centre?
50 people attended the first open meeting and produced 200 stickers in response to questions asked. 27 ‘stakeholders’ and members of the community attended the first day of our workshop with many returning for the second day. About 60 attended our second open evening meeting. Over 100 people attended the presentation of the final co-authored workshop report and supported our emerging purpose and aims.
At our inaugural AGM our constitution was unanimously adopted.
Workshop Report
What can you do?
LOOK! St Albans is Your community voice on design!
We want to work together to ensure we (the community, the Council and the developers) have buildings that we can all be proud of.
Become involved as much as you can. Please offer some of your time and skills.
Keep up to date with news, events and meetings. LOOK! St Albans will advise you of sites where we have been asked by developers to hold a design charrette. Join in, have your say.
We encourage you to read our Workshop Report, which you can access above.
To assist with funding LOOK! St Albans’ operational expenses,we would be very grateful to receive a donation, no matter how small. There are three ways to achieve this:
- Make a direct transfer to the account of LOOK! St Albans – Our Community Voice on Design; 20-74-12; 63571726.
- Send a cheque payable to LOOK! St Albans to the Honorary Treasurer, Christopher Debenham at 37 De Tany Court, St Albans, Herts, AL1 1TU.
- Make an online donation through the ‘Buy me a Coffee’ scheme.
All proceeds will help us to continue with our work. Thank you.