Our explorations are based around a group of small rural towns in the Afan Valley. Smaller towns and rural areas have struggled to exist as traditional work has been industrialised, meaning communities have shrunk and demographics have reduced to retirement age. Social infrastructure such as shops, schools, libraries, pubs, and places of worship have been closing down at an exponential rate - leading to further decline.

Measures imposed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic have prompted a “permanent change in working culture”. Working from home has allowed many employees to abandon the expensive living costs of large cities for more rural or small town settings where they have better access to open space and nature.

As a unit we explored how this new working culture might affect the rural condition. Might this prompt rural/small-town growth? Could this regenerate these struggling communities? What kind of interventions might help to re-intensify small communities with people able to work from their homes more regularly?

Process is key to how we explore these ideas, get to know the place we are working in, and develop proposals. The unit gives students a clear framework of drawing and model-making tasks that can help them to explore and develop ideas, encouraging intuition and iteration. We deliberately push the idea of taking risks and embracing mistakes as part of this process. We use childhood memories to explore spatial ideas, using loose and expressive methods of drawing and making. We then apply these ideas to moments within the proposed interventions.