Grizedale Arts are an arts organisation based in the Lake District who believe in using art as a catalyst for social change. They work with artists from many different backgrounds, and host artist residents from all over the world, as well as connecting with the villages on their doorstep.

They plan to return the historic Farmer’s Arms on the edge of the Lake District National Park to its place at the heart of the community. They have previously restored Lawson Park, Low Parkamoor, and the Coniston Institute, so they have successfully completed community focussed building projects before.

In response to local concern and in collaboration with them, Grizedale Arts is leading the initiative to transform the inn to a hybrid community hub. Offering open access to the arts and new routes to collaborative thinking and exchange, an inclusive offer will reinvigorate its heritage as a gateway between the local communities and the wider world. With creative thinking and opportunities for learning/participation underpinning how the experience is delivered, it will be a place to learn from each other, to develop solutions to shared concerns and to grow and fulfil new ambitions.

Find out more at https://www.grizedale.org/about/ and https://lakedistrictfarmersarms.com/

The integration of a loyal, local clientelle with a diverse range of tourists and visitors aims to bridge the barriers between these two different groups, their needs and their desires. As the ‘bread and butter’ of the scheme - the pubs economic and social success is the facilitative backbone of the Farmer’s Arms.

Hosting events that serve the social and economic interests of the wider Crake Valley includes volunteer programmes, job creation and and engagement with local trades hopes to engender positive trophic socio-economic impacts for the region.

Connecting to local entrepenuers and providing spaces and resources for them and their businesses to grow is a key part of facilitating the community hub aspect of the Farmer’s Arms. Partnering with local schools and educational facilities hopes to provide a space for learning and growth at the FA.

In this project we will look to teach new and improve on both analog and digital skills that will hopefully be applicable throughout your university career. We will rely on sketching, physical model making and digital design to aid us throughout the design process. We will also look to improve skills in analytical research, presentation, use of the Adobe package (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator), and 3D Software (Sketchup, Revit, Rhino).

Name: Andrew King
Atelier: Infra.Space
Undergrad Location: University of Nottingham
Reasons for choosing Grizedale project: Social Impacts of a Diverse Rural Programme
Architectural interests: The Intersections of Politics & Urbanism
Interests outside of Architecture: Politics, Art, Demography & Geography

On the second day of the Pay Inn Display project, our team continued building on the research of day 1 and consolidating the information required to carry out the graphic outputs for the end of week one and the cohesive and comprehensive design charrette we are to undertake next week.

The 4 sub teams - culture, people, the valley & the building - continued to research their respective disciplines and began the production of graphic information ahead of tomorrow's internal Pay Inn Display presentation review which hopes to mirror a real-life design meeting for the undergraduate students.

The image above, created by Zoe for the 'People' team, were created to explore the three types of people that we believe the Farmer's Arms are trying to connect with. They are the established local community, who are aware of the programme and it's history and actively engaged, the middle-aged and middle-class holidaymakers who are likely to pass through the area and the younger more diverse 'arts' crowd who Grizedale are hoping to attract to the programme.

These profiles were created to explore the desires of, impacts to and barriers for the various demographic groups when visiting (or planning to visit) the Farmer's Arms in order to aid a strategy to best ameliorate these issues for the disparate groups and maximise the outreach and positive impact of the Farmer's Arms programme.

Today the groups presented the work that they have been doing so far. We were really impressed with their outputs!

The groups are people, culture, the valley, and the building, which can be summarised as focussing on the social and the physical aspects of the project. They really investigated the local area through the architecture and the community, and in the discussion after the presentation brought their ideas together to be able to take them forward.

This image, created by Sam explores the materiality of the building and brings to life the physical aspects of vernacular building in the Lake District.

Some base images used in this design were provided by Grizedale Arts.