Taking things forward..

Whilst on a walk through Nottingham city centre it became apparent to me that there were unusual amounts of empty shops.. and after some research in to this i found out that Nottingham is listed in BNP Paribas' 'Retial Risk Index' as the riskiest major city in the UK.

On a one hour walk around the centre this is what i saw ... Just click an image to enlarge it..

I found that there are a number of city-based initiatives in place to help revive the high streets but few involve occupying the empty spaces and most are merely covering up whats behind.. This provoked some research in to the 'pop-up' movement, usually associated with a temporary installation that is used to experiement, promote and gauge interest in a new idea or product.

A Knight Frank report too supports the idea of a 'pop-up' shop, especially during these tough economic times. They state that landlords are embracing the short term contracts, they believe that this sort of tenant help keep the site occupied whilst negotiations for longer term contracts take place. 

Nationwide there are many projects and concepts that strive to regenerate the units that are left abandoned following the recession, many of which i have noticed involve art.

At this stage i started to bring together a few notes i had made and began developing a brief.

- The project should include a series of temporary structures
- They should provide a space with in a space without affecting the original sturcture
- The installation should be easily deployed and removed when necessary

> Next stop is to identify a site and to continue exploring technologes suitable for the task in hand.