‘Making Space in Dalston is a Design for London funded £1m initiative to improve Dalston’s open spaces and has been has been recognised by a series of awards including The Landscape Institute Awards, The Hackney Design Awards, Capital Growth Edible Estates Awards, Berlin’s new Urban Interveniton Awards and the London Planning Awards.

Making Space in Dalston is an ‘umbrella’ for a number of proposed, planned and completed public realm interventions helping to rejuvenate the area by ‘joining up’ the existing fabric of Dalston with the new housing, public square and station at Dalston Junction. It is part of the Mayor of London’s £220 million ‘Great Outdoors’ public realm improvement programme.

The initiative is a series of 76 micro-projects designed by J&L Gibbons and muf architecture/art, developed by Hackney Council and the LDA’s Design for London and drawn up in close collaboration with local residents, businesses and organisations. The project team worked with local players including Open Dalston, Arcola Theatre, Hackney Cooperative Developments, local businesses and residents and the final projects were created through this unique collaboration between community organisations, the creative industries and the neighbourhood where they are based, and between the London Borough of Hackney and the third sector.

The resultant projects range from the creation of a new green space with a fantastic programme of community engagement and events on a previous derelict piece of railway land, outdoor play equipment in a mirrored storage container, new signs and lighting and improved paving.

The success of the initiative – and in particular the way it was developed with and through local residents, businesses and organisations – is now being recognised locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.

The breadth of awards demonstrates the depth of the overall project, which is focussed on understanding the value of the local context and ensuring that the benefits of regeneration are spread widely to make a visible difference to the surrounding environment with help of well designed and locally supported projects.

The publication Making Space in Dalston can be downloaded below. A new publication setting out how to achieve similar results elsewhere is being developed and is due to be released February 2011. This publication will be a guidebook on how to do deliberative planning – shaping places through incremental change, interim uses and socially inclusive projects to influence strategic thinking about places. The publication also aims to be a 'cookbook', giving direct and detailed examples of the kinds of processes and collaborations that enable community involvement and lead to rooted urban places.

The Landscape Institute Awards recognised the Making Space in Dalston initiative under its Communication and Presentation category - awarded to “individuals and organisations whose vision leads the way in creating innovative and dynamic landscape.”

The Hackney Design Awards gave an award to “The Barn and Eco Garden”, designed by J&L Gibbons, muf and EXYZT at the Eastern Curve, part of the Making Space in Dalston initiative and completed on site this year. The judges said that “The Barn and Eco Gardens is an excellent example of how an abandoned piece of land can be affordably transformed into an asset. Every inch has a strong sense of community spirit.” For more information see here.

At the Capital Growth Edible Estates awards, the Best Estate Garden award was given to the Somerford and Shacklewell Tenants and Residents Association as one of the 76 micro-projects, who transformed the Somerford Grove estate in Dalston through workshops with the designers by planting fruit trees on unloved grass patches, filling disused raised beds with organic seedlings and distributing produce over the last year. For more information see here.

Berlin’s new Urban Intervention Awards, which aims to ‘honour the vital process of a creative and innovative exploration of the city and inspire emulation’ recognised the overall impact of the scheme’s Barn and Eco Garden, which was on the final short-list and is currently exhibited at Berlin’s former Tempelhof airport. For more information see here.

See The Barn and Eco Garden project is also short-listed for the Royal Town Planning Institute’s London Planning Awards, which will be announced in January 2011. For more information see here.