--- title: Making Places Together | Experience & Commercial Strategy description: An Experience & Commercial Strategy case study exploring community participation, creative making, local heritage and how adaptable experiences can help people connect with place. --- ![Making Places Together Experience & Commercial Strategy Studio](https://gemmaheath.com/hubfs/Making%20Places%20Together%20%20Experience%20%26%20Commercial%20Strategy%20Studio.png "Making Places Together Experience & Commercial Strategy Studio") # Making Places Together | Project Type: | Community /  Social Impact | | --- | --- | | Organisation: | Collective Skills Project CIC | | Role: | Co-Founder · Concept Development · Community Activation · Creative Direction · Delivery | | Period: | Delivered |   ## Could simple creative activities help people engage differently with their local community and surroundings? Two of our early Collective Skills Project activations explored a similar idea: **Community Clay + Potbank in the Park** The materials were deliberately uncomplicated. Clay. Paint. Leaves. Twigs. A board. The important part was not creating perfect artwork. It was giving people a reason to notice, make and participate. ## Community Clay Community Clay was designed as an accessible creative activity people could do from home. We prepared individual packs containing a slab of air-dry clay along with simple instructions. The packs themselves were treated as part of the experience. The clay was portioned, wrapped and tied neatly with cord so that receiving the package felt considered rather than simply functional. Participants could make something at home, allow the clay to dry and decorate it using paints or materials they already had available. We then encouraged people to tie their creations to the railings on the local high street to build a community street gallery.  The result was a very simple participation loop: **Receive → Make → Decorate → Share** It required very little previous experience and allowed people to take part on their own terms. ## Potbank in the Park Potbank in the Park was intended to take that idea further by bringing people together physically in a local park. The original experience asked participants to begin with a walk. They would explore the park and collect natural materials such as: leaves, sticks, twigs, textures and other fallen natural objects. Each participant would then receive an A3 board and paints. Using the things they had discovered on their walk, they would create their own piece of artwork. But there was another layer to it. Each individual board represented **one brick in a much larger Potbank** — referencing Stoke-on-Trent's distinctive ceramic heritage. At the end of the event, all of the individual pieces were intended to be brought together into one large Potbank-shaped artwork, with an aerial photograph capturing the complete community piece. One person made a picture. Together, everyone made something much larger. ## Then the original event couldn’t happen For practical reasons, the planned physical park event could not go ahead in its original format. We had two options. Cancel it. Or redesign it. We chose the second. The materials were instead packaged and delivered to everyone who had registered. Participants still went out independently to explore their surroundings and gather natural materials. They created their individual artwork at home over the following days and sent photographs of the completed pieces back to us. I then digitally assembled those individual contributions into the Potbank-shaped collage that the physical event had originally intended to create. The format changed. **The core idea survived.** ## Protect the purpose, not the format That adaptation taught me something I still use now. When an experience cannot happen exactly as originally imagined, the first question should not necessarily be: **How do we reproduce the event?** It should be: **What was the event actually trying to achieve?** Potbank in the Park was not really about standing in one park with an A3 board. It was about: noticing the local environment, encouraging creativity, connecting people with place, giving individuals something to contribute, combining those contributions into one shared community outcome. Once we understood that, there were other ways to achieve it. ## Individual expression. Collective result. I still like the mechanism behind these ideas. Everyone's contribution could look completely different. Different materials. Different colours. Different interpretations. But every piece had an equal role in the finished artwork. The individual work did not disappear when it became part of the group piece. It became more meaningful because of it. That is a simple but useful community principle: **Participation becomes more powerful when people can see how their contribution connects to something larger.** ## Place as part of the experience The projects were also about encouraging people to look again at where they lived. In Potbank in the Park, the local landscape provided the materials. And the final Potbank form connected the artwork back to the area's industrial and ceramic identity. Rather than simply telling people about local heritage or nature, the experience asked them to interact with it. **Walk through it. Notice it. Collect from it. Make with it.** That kind of participation creates a different relationship with place than passive information alone. ## What this work demonstrates **Participatory Experience Design** Creating simple formats where people contribute rather than simply observe. **Creative Direction** Connecting individual making, local nature and Stoke-on-Trent's Potbank identity into one coherent idea. **Community Engagement** Designing low-barrier activities that could involve people with different levels of creative confidence. **Placemaking** Using local environments and heritage as active parts of an experience. **Adaptability** Redesigning an activation when the intended physical event became impossible. **Experience Prototyping** Testing ideas simply and practically rather than requiring a large production infrastructure. **Content & Packaging** Treating instructions, materials and the way participation was presented as part of the overall experience. **Collective Participation** Creating an outcome where individual contributions became part of one shared piece. ## The lesson I carry forward **Do not become so attached to the format that you lose the reason the experience existed.** Potbank in the Park did not happen exactly as imagined. But people still explored. They still made. They still contributed. And we still created the collective Potbank at the end. Sometimes adaptation does not weaken an experience. It reveals **what was essential about it in the first place.** ### Interested in Working Together? ![ACE - Logo (400 x 400 px) (400 x 250 px) (2)](https://gemmaheath.com/hubfs/ACE%20-%20Logo%20(400%20x%20400%20px)%20(400%20x%20250%20px)%20(2).png "ACE - Logo (400 x 400 px) (400 x 250 px) (2)") - [Home](https://gemmaheath.com?hsLang=en) - [Experience & Commercial Strategy Studio](https://gemmaheath.com/experience-commercial-strategy-studio?hsLang=en) - [About](https://gemmaheath.com/about?hsLang=en) © 2026. All rights reserved.