Sanctuary Spaces explores how Scotland’s urban communities can use community land ownership to protect green spaces and reimagine disused sites such as former bowling clubs as inclusive, community-owned assets.
Context
This project explored community land ownership and public space through the lens of racial justice and participatory design. Centred on reimagining underused bowling greens in urban Scotland, the work responded to the limitations of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 in addressing the needs of racialised and underrepresented communities.
Challenges
The Community Right to Buy framework was designed for rural communities, and it explicitly can't be used to protect spaces, including green spaces, from property developers.
Bowling clubs and greens are closing rapidly, yet their status as members clubs - not open to the general public - means they are often overlooked as potential, much-needed, community assets.
Urban communities often lack the time, resources, and support to act early. The challenge was to design an intervention that resonates with diverse, urban communities and encourages proactive registration of interest in potential sites for shared use, before they’re lost to redevelopment.
ApproachI used ethnography, public engagement, and participatory workshops to centre Global Majority voices and the lived experiences of people affected by urban land struggles. By spending time in spaces like Bowling Green Together and working with local residents in Mount Florida, I was able to ground the research in real relationships and everyday experiences.
Outcome
The project resulted in a service design proposal called 'Sanctuary Spaces'. Sanctuary is both spatial and social, and enhances both human life, and ecology more broadly. Through research in the local area, I found that local people did not relate to language or the concept of ownership but they were interested in protecting spaces, especially green spaces in the city.
The project focuses on using the Community Right to Buy Part 2 (registering community interest in land), and offers a partnership between organisations that support communities to own land and integration networks.
Sanctuary Spaces also offers peer support from members of Community Land Scotland and Development Trust Association Scotland, providing inspiration for groups and an opportunity to find out more how the process works in reality.
The logbook is an interactive workbook that breaks down the complex process of registering interest in land into plain language, with prompts and activities that help groups generate ideas, track their progress and reflect on progress. This service touchpoint reduces the hours of support needed by each group which means that community land organisations can provide guidance to more groups. The reflections can also be used by groups to document some of the systemic or policy-related challenges that groups are facing and be used to provide evidence to the Scottish Government and other key decision-makers.
Impact
Sanctuary Spaces was developed as part of a Masters thesis exploring how service design can support racialised communities to reclaim urban land through Scotland’s Community Right to Buy legislation. The project foregrounds research as a tool for translation and agency, bridging policy, lived experience, and participatory design.
Key contributions include:
Translating complex land ownership legislation into accessible, community-facing formats
Prototyping a logbook touchpoint to scaffold collective decision-making
Applying decolonial and relational design theory to a real-world policy context
Demonstrating how service design can surface systemic barriers and reimagine civic infrastructure
Offering a speculative framework for community-led stewardship of disused urban sites
Engagement tools
Bowling Club Gates: I replicated local bowling club gates to create a 'curious object' to draw people in. These gates are literally what people would see passing a bowling club, but they also hold a metaphorical meaning relating to communities being 'locked' out of their right to own land. The gates were a way to draw in members of the public (see image below, at the Glasgow Zine Fair).
During 'Roots of Belonging' a garden-based workshop, I introduced the group to the process through a journey map and storyboard about registering community interest in land. We then shared barriers (locks) and ways to overcome them (keys),
Mount Florida Community Engagement
Outcome
Sanctuary Spaces logbook that breaks the process of 'registering community interest in land' into steps. It's designed for groups to work together and track their progress, while reducing the need for as much in-person support from community ownership support organisations.
The logbook has been designed for urban communities, and it can also be used to report some of the current challenges back to government and policy level.
