“Our relationship to the built environment is perhaps the most crucial element to the quality of community life.” 1.00–5.00pm Saturday 1 November Free discussions bringing together representatives of community & activist groups – including local groups from Glasgow, Edinburgh, London and Manchester – to share their experience of community-based engagement in the planning processes of urban regeneration and the built environment. In the British-wide context of gentrification, and with a failing neo-liberal economic model, questions surrounding the ownership and management of social space have never been more relevant. The language of regeneration in fact sugar-coats the reality of gentrification: the privatisation of essential infrastructure is a policy of liberating the forces of greed. It is important to remember that "ideas have consequences", and important to question what happens when these are tested in the real world. In response, we need better ideas and solidarity strategies. The worsening financial crisis provides the public an opportunity to redefine what constitutes 'the public interest' and to reassert its claims over how finance should be managed and allocated and in whose interest. Film excerpts will be used to inform the discussions - a strong dimension connecting the diverse groups is their shared interest in an engaged film making practice as a basis for connecting people. Mark Saunders The Spectacle, Martin Slavin Games Monitor, Nick Durie Glasgow Residents Network, Carl Taylor Hackney Independent, Libby Porter Planners Network UK, Neil Gray Variant, Jonathon Atkinson Urban Research Collective, Anthony Iles Mute. http://www.metamute.org Organised by Variant affinity group and The
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