Young Planners Workshop

Chatham’s young planners and designers got hands-on shaping the future of a large town centre site this week.

As part of our Heart of Chatham programme, we’re creating a vision and masterplan for a site encompassing the former Go Outdoors superstore, market hall and multi-storey car park.

Ensuring young people’s voices are included in the future of the site is key to this inclusive plan for Chatham’s centre. Our first workshop held at Arches Local’s Fit & Fed programme at Luton Primary School was all about empowering young people as part of this development.

Children aged between 5 and 15 were tasked with drawing their interpretation of a ‘perfect street’, of which many produced images featuring close-knit neighbourhoods that had plenty of street trees, more people walking and cycling, and no shortage of ice cream shops.

Our young planners and designers were also busy creating a large masterplan for the site to voice their need for a more child-friendly town centre where they feel safe to move around and spend time outdoors.