About

Background

We are The Portland Inn Project, an artist and community led organisation based in Stoke-on-Trent. We propose a disused pub as a community space and social enterprise, testing the role of culture and creativity in community development settings. The organisation has received National recognition, via i.e. shortlisting for RIBA Macewen Award, and we were one of the winners of the Whitegold International Ceramics Prize 2020.

From 2019 our community has been supported by a groundbreaking programme called Creative Civic Change (CCC), led by Local Trust and a consortium of partners, which came to an end in December 2022. Not only did CCC make it possible for us to be there for local residents throughout the pandemic, it enabled us to develop from a project into an organisation, and meant we have been in a position to begin to plan for our future. During 2021 and 2022 we began working alongside residents in our neighbourhood to write a 100 Year Plan.

What is a 100 year plan?

Across arts and community sectors, the way that activity and development is funded is often in short term projects. It is widely acknowledged that this can lead to a lack of opportunity to plan long term, and often results in a lack of resource and opportunity to make lasting change. For a community to embark on putting together a 100 year plan, each smaller, short term project can be viewed as part of a wider landscape plan.pl66

The 100 year plan borrows from landscape architecture and design thinking to empower communities, funders and policy makers to resist short term project based thinking, and to begin to think more holistically and sustainably, longer term, which can have significant benefits, socially, politically and environmentally.

Change and development, just like the making of a garden, happens over time. A 100 year plan can be a physical and geographical plan for a community landscape but it works just as well as a concept of change over time.

The writing of a 100 year plan is an idea that other communities can pick up and use too. We have been working on The Tools which will support other neighbourhoods to get started.

The Tools