The Power of Convening: Towards an Understanding of Artist-Led Collective Practice as a Convener of Place

Assemble is an art and architecture design collective based in London. Akin to Ruangrupa, they came to public attention through the functions of the international art world: in Assemble’s case, the 2015 Turner Prize for their work with Granby Community Land Trust (CLT) and the resident-led renovation of houses in Liverpool. However, what became almost immediately obvious when commencing the story with a member of the Assemble was that the prize was an adjunct to a collective practice that had been developing since 2010 (Assemble 2023). Assemble is constantly in negotiation with different forms of power and social relationships, both internally and externally. This was expressed in the Yarn story as follows: ‘we operate within certain worlds where we are complicit in—even while being critical of—the status quo’ (Edgerley 2018). This tension is also evident in the commission process that Assemble engages in, which is not much different from other non-socially engaged architectural companies where there is a client brief and often a competitive process. Assemble navigates public and private finance, bridging organizations, working with councils and property developers. In short, the same forces of capital and the state permeate the places and spaces of contemporary existence in which Assemble practices. Yet, the way they work in a horizontal method through DIY practices and in an open and accessible manner begins to challenge this status quo. Early on in our story on Yarn, Frances (Fran) Edgerley, a co-founder of Assemble and the main person with whom I conversed throughout the story, highlighted this theme. Edgerley suggested that ‘I think our practice, where it is interesting, is fundamentally interested in architecture as self-determination—that is why we set up Blackhorse workshop, Baltic Street adventure playground, and originally the idea behind Granby workshop.’ (Edgerley 2018). This concept of self-determination became a central theme in the story of Assemble and is important in understanding how they convene and continue this practice over time in very different places. Borchi positions self-determination as the ability to self-govern and having the relative freedom to self-create and self-care through sustainable methods (Borchi 2018). Similarly, Cayuela argues that developing forms of mutual aid through both distribution and contribution can move towards genuine emancipatory practices for different forms of self-organized groups. Cayuela points out that ‘whereas charity legitimates and perpetuates capital and the state as forms of social organization, mutual aid offers the potential to look beyond those and enacts values associated with a social organization based on commoning’ (Ruiz Cayuela 2021). This is crucial in the context of Assemble’s practice and their convening role because they do not simply bring different parties to the metaphorical table; their intent is for those whom they work with to lead in their own contexts. This process is also reflexive as Edgerley stated that they were always conscious of ‘how your internal relations then reflect outwards through your work’ (Edgerley 2018). This suggests that the interplay between openness and accessibility, between the internal and the external, must always be in flux with the possibility of re-negotiation, which moves towards elements of boundary commoning. This self-determination is thus part of the convening process for Assemble, and it is intrinsic to placemaking, as Courage suggests: ‘this emphasis on partnership and connections is another essential component of placemaking’ (Courage 2023). For Courage, this sense of shared ownership through community-led approaches can create a deeper understanding of the nuances of a specific place. This became apparent on several occasions during our conversations, including with members of the Baltic Street Adventure Playground in Glasgow. The Playground is child-led and was set up as ‘a direct response to the lack of play space and out of school provision for the community of children and families in Dalmarnock’ (Baltic Street Adventure Playground 2023). Assemble initially worked with a consortium (including Create London, Creative Scotland, Glasgow City Council, and Clyde Gateway Development Corporation) on the capital works that were needed for the Playground to function. It must be noted that the playground was created within the context of an area that has seen more than a decade of regeneration. This regeneration was given greater impetus through the legacy of the Commonwealth Games in 2014. However, as has been well documented by researchers such as Neil Gray, this regeneration (even with considerable state intervention) is not just unfinished; it has failed to deliver the original plan (Gray 2022). Through the lens of the commons, this initial stage is somewhat problematic, as some would see this as cooption or capitulation to the emancipatory significations within both the imaginary of the commons and the practicalities of resources because the finance was raised through a hybrid of public–private funding. However, the community at Baltic Street and Assemble have incrementally instigated a form of self-determinism by moving the initial project into a self-sustaining community interest model by working with localized food distributing schemes, volunteers, schools, and cooperatives to create a space for sharing knowledge and skills and developing a sense of care within and by local residents. To a degree, they have begun to initiate a form of commoning closer to that of the emancipatory outlined by Cayuela (Ruiz Cayuela 2021). This had been achieved by slowly expanding the commons subjectivities through increasing the numbers of people visiting (including school visits and volunteering) and thus contributing to the playground, and its ethos, coupled with moving towards a self-sustaining model.

Writing in 2019, I suggested that Assemble and Baltic Street had ‘moved beyond public policy initiatives and implemented this sense of community voice. The fact the Playground was actively positioning its children as content creators set a precedent for the ongoing relationship with the wider community’ (J.D. Wright 2019). This idea of community voice is highly problematic, and clarification of this statement is needed. Baltic Street Playground was, in fact, initiated and run by residents of Dalmarnock, and they saw themselves as needing to come together to build a space/provision that was missing. This was a case of ‘bottom-up’ placemaking that worked with/and alongside a collective, which itself formed a community of those invested in many different ways with the Playground. As such, the ‘community voice’ was only ever specifically those involved in the playground and not representative of the entirety of the area. Assemble’s inter-relationship with this situation was as broker of the relationships between specific funders, policymakers, playground workers, and those residents that initially came together. As such, Baltic Street itself became a community in and of itself, with many complex inter-relationships with wider socio-cultural and geo-political trajectories.