Even if we don’t always like to think about it, the construction industry does cause the general public considerable low-level stress. Next to CM’s offices, an ongoing office development funneled pedestrians down a too-narrow walkway for months on end, planting the question “why couldn’t they have made it 50cm wider” in thousands of heads hundreds of times. If you’re faced with that persistent annoyance, it’s easy to think “not again” next time you see a tower crane go up.
And while public-facing projects often take their responsibility to engage with the public seriously, their efforts can come over as trite and tick-boxy. A friend whose house is currently being overshadowed by a new social housing block three storeys higher than the one it replaced was less than thrilled by an appeasing invitation to a face-painting day at a distant community centre. It’s hard to please everyone, but it’s also too easy to reach for an off-the-shelf solution.
Or there is the current trend for hoardings that tell passers-by about the number of jobs a project has created, or tonnes of carbon saved. It’s better than nothing, but it can also look like a facet of a marketing campaign.
But construction genuinely does want to foster positive feelings about what it does. It’s not just about fulfilling planning requirements, or a higher score on the Considerate Constructors Scheme, or nice pics on the website (although, let’s face it, these issues do play a part). It’s because the vast majority of the industry is motivated by creating a built environment that makes life better for everyone, whether they own, rent, work in, visit or just look at the buildings created or renovated. Construction is a positive activity, and we’d like the rest of the world to feel positive about it too.
Plus, there’s the industry’s need to attract skills into the sector, a mission we often discuss in terms of “breaking down barriers”. But what if those barriers were lower because construction sites in local communities had lodged themselves in the public consciousness as places of interest, innovation, achievement, and faith in the future? That made you smile as you went past, (even if semi-reluctantly) and made a positive contribution to local life, even while construction was in progress?
That’s why the Bureau of Silly Ideas, a lottery-funded arts company, is talking sense about construction. Engagement efforts, even if genuinely meant, are often based on concepts of “value” that are of less consequence to the general public getting on with their daily lives than the industry itself. But if we take a different perspective on construction – by inviting artists, performers and the creative sector to offer their takes on our industry – then we might just be able change a few perceptions as well.
