A People’s Production Lab is reimagining Preston using art – and cooperatives

Preston has become a testing ground for a new way to run a local economy

Preston residents discuss how art can transform their neighbourhoods at the People’s Production Lab (Photos Hazel Sheffield)

It’s Saturday morning in Preston and groups of people are hunched over whiteboards printed with maps of their neighbourhoods, covering them with Post-it notes.

“Green land for dog walks,” one reads. A street is marked “dark @ night” and another “hangout spot”. The groups are identifying what’s already available in neighbourhoods and what is desirable. It is part of the social action lab, a project with the British Council and the University of Central Lancashire to encourage Preston residents to become more active within their communities by offering them seed funding to develop projects.

The social action lab, which brings together artists, community activists and residents, is exactly the kind of thing Ruth Heritage hoped to support in Preston when she opened the People’s Production Lab in November 2017. The next step is to turn the many businesses and artists working within the Lab into a cooperative, owned and run by the people who work there, to make it sustainable.