Street life and street culture: between Early Modern Europe and the present

This proposal for follow-on-funding is to continue the work of the 'Beyond Text' AHRC-funded network Street life and street culture: Between Early Modern Europe and the present (AH/G000417/1). The aim of the project is to extend our discussion to include those involved with advising on and making public policy in relation to the public realm of the contemporary street.

Today the street is often synonymous with anxiety, worry, and anti-social behaviour: nothing of this is new. The opposite is also true, however, as urban renewal, major infrastructure and monumental architectural projects are invested by planners and policy-makers with the expectation that they will redeem depressed areas and renew the social and physical fabric of neighbourhoods and communities: again, this also applies to the past. Led by historians who are specialists on the cities, architecture, and social life of Europe in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, the Street Life and Street Culture network over the two years of its existence has brought together those who work on and are involved in the life of historic and contemporary cities and streets. To date, the Street Life and Street Culture network has involved architectural and art historians and theoreticians, historians, planners, public officials, artists and critics, film-makers, a sound artist and an actor, to create an interdisciplinary, international community drawn from the UK, USA and Europe. The aim has been to create a fruitful dialogue with multiple voices that will allow all of us to view the lives of cities, as witnessed along streets, through comparative perspectives.

The Street Life and Street Culture network seeks to understand the broader issues concerning the street as a place of cultural mediation and the construction of identities by comparing perspectives and methodologies from different disciplines, and confronting and comparing Early Modern experiences with our contemporary world as a means of throwing new light on issues. The street is a result of the urban process, a continuously reinforced dynamic between private and public spheres and the negotiation of public, social, and private identities. The built fabric of the street - not just a road along which people speed but a physical and social space created by the buildings that front onto it - forms an essential place for everyday social interaction, as well as a possible setting for spectacular events. The social relationships and the events that take place in the space of the street give particular meanings and resonances - temporary, local, national, or historical - to an individual street as well as to a city as a whole.

The network has sought an historical understanding of contemporary problems concerning street culture by addressing issues that may also help reframe current issues, thus feeding into public policy. This objective has been advanced by the network's varied constituencies and the involvement of our original project partners, CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment). The primary aim of this bid is to take the network one step further, to engage directly with policy/practice participants and thus to take the discussion we have initiated to a different level. In so doing, we seek again to show the value and significance of historical precedents from the Early Modern period for the debates that deal with contemporary concerns pertaining to the form and use of the public urban space of streets.

The Street Life network has already had a positive impact in relation to academics, contemporary practitioners, and the public audiences of its workshops and conference. This bid is intended to allow the PI and CI to continue that work by moving the network forward to engage directly with those working in the area of advising on and making public policy. We have already invited and secured expressions of interest from the following national charities and advisory bodies:
- The Joseph Rowntree Foundation: in particular in relation to their 'Place' programme, which is concerned with 'contributing to the building and development of strong, sustainable and inclusive communities'.
- The Prince's Foundation, who are much concerned with both 'the design of buildings and the public realm'.
- Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA): in relation to the Policy and Public Affairs team and RIBA London's Street Scene, which looks at the quality of everyday streets and public spaces and the delivery of such objectives.
- The Young Foundation: in particular in relation to their 'Future Communities' programme, which is concerned with 'designing new places for communities and housing that are socially sustainable'.
We intend to initiate and develop further contacts and involvement with professional bodies as well as local and national government, and policing bodies if our bid is successful.

By bringing a broad range of interlocutors to our events, we aim to inflect policy with the cross-cultural and cross-chronological breadth that has characterised the work of the network to date. We will bring key figures from these organisations together with selected historians, commentators and practitioners concerned with the contemporary city who have already participated in the Streetlife network; this variety of perspectives will enrich our discussion and extend its impact considerably.

Our programme is designed so that the first phase will enable us to identify the most promising lines for collaboration and research in a closed context, and then the workshops will enable presentation and discussion of ideas and issues within a collaborative and supportive framework but accessible to a small public audience. The partnership of HEI (PI and CI, as well as existing network participants) and various high profile advisory and public bodies will facilitate media engagement and presentation to a broader public. We hope also to be able to benefit from the support of AHRC's own media office to promote our activity.

The intention of this proposed extension of the network's activities is, therefore, not to limit discussions to the academic realm but to enable the network's activities to impact on the discussion of public policy. Such discussionsare at the heart of current and future concerns and debates on the lives of communities and public spaces, and are given added relevance by the government's desire to build the 'Big Society'.

The existing network website, hosted at the University of Bath, will continue to be used (and enhanced) to provide both a public-facing account of our activity and findings, and a 'closed' site for participants to advance discussion and produce and share documents which can later be published in the public part of the site (Archive). Moreover, we envisage that the website will provide an ideal forum for the publication of the continuing work of the network, with the publication of reports, research papers and sound and video recordings of some of our events.