PRACTICE PROFILE

icecream architecture is a team of Community-led Facilitators, Environmental Artists, Graphic Designers, Architects, Illustrators, Product Designers and Strategic Thinkers.

We engineer and deliver reactive solutions that boost regeneration, enterprise, public art, communication, youth engagement, funding potential and community involvement; each with the core aim to motivate and mobilise civic pride. icecream architecture has developed through its rapport between community groups, artists and Local Authorities. There has emerged a substantial track record for integrating these groups throughout the delivery process and producing carefully considered and initiated proposals, strategies and artworks. The team consists of enthusiastic and conscientious professionals, trained in Scotland with independent and group experience in the following disciplines; Architecture, Sculpture and Environmental Art, Product design, Graphics and Illustration.

The group operates through a combined passion to explore how sharing and applying these skills can put people at the heart of decision making and creativity within their communities. icecream architecture was established in 2009 by Desmond Bernie and Sarah Frood after many years of collaborative work. It has been recognised as an innovative and forward thinking organisation within Scottish architecture and engagement / community design through winning both the Public Vote and the Judges choice for the Scottish Design Impact Awards 2014 and Scottish Social Enterprise Inspiring Youth Award 2014 and the UK Social Enterprise Inspiring Youth Award.

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Approach To Community Engagement

Our art, design and strategy company has had a focus from the beginning on engaging the community and encouraging their participation in permanent and semi-permanent artworks and interventions in order to build ownership in the long-term. In this sense we implement an active process of engagement across our projects where the public become part and parcel to the realisation of any strategy or artwork. This in turn fosters the sustainability of outcomes which rejuvenate the physical and nonphysical identity of a place. The following three stages described outline the emphasis we place on different approaches to engagement which we believe ensure that an public artwork or project is successful and relevant;

Research by doing

To encourage interaction and test theories either from the team or from out-with, icecream architecture implements a strategy of ‘research by doing’ where research is tested and enhanced by creating events and interventions. Music, art and action are used to enliven a space for periods during the research. This both enhances the team's understanding of the complexities and attributes of the space and opens conversations with partners and passers by. In doing this we are in a short time able to connect with key groups of people and partners and are then able to visualise and discuss the potential of an area or idea.

Integration and Canalisation

The team place high importance in fully integrating with the groups that we are working with. To ensure that our understanding of the area and the designs, solutions and implementation that we propose are inherently about catalysing the growth and development of a place.

Galvanising a community of action

A key approach to our process is to value every contact. In the creation of an artwork, concept or strategy for a place the people of that place must feel connected to it. As the process progresses icecream collate an active database of interested parties and provide regular updates of new concepts, events, and opportunities to get involved.

Approach To Community Engagement

Our art, design and strategy company has had a focus from the beginning on engaging the community and encouraging their participation in permanent and semi-permanent artworks and interventions in order to build ownership in the long-term. In this sense we implement an active process of engagement across our projects where the public become part and parcel to the realisation of any strategy or artwork. This in turn fosters the sustainability of outcomes which rejuvenate the physical and nonphysical identity of a place. The following three stages described outline the emphasis we place on different approaches to engagement which we believe ensure that an public artwork or project is successful and relevant;

Research by doing

To encourage interaction and test theories either from the team or from out-with, icecream architecture implements a strategy of ‘research by doing’ where research is tested and enhanced by creating events and interventions. Music, art and action are used to enliven a space for periods during the research. This both enhances the team's understanding of the complexities and attributes of the space and opens conversations with partners and passers by. In doing this we are in a short time able to connect with key groups of people and partners and are then able to visualise and discuss the potential of an area or idea.

Integration and Canalisation

The team place high importance in fully integrating with the groups that we are working with. To ensure that our understanding of the area and the designs, solutions and implementation that we propose are inherently about catalysing the growth and development of a place.

Galvanising a community of action

A key approach to our process is to value every contact. In the creation of an artwork, concept or strategy for a place the people of that place must feel connected to it. As the process progresses icecream collate an active database of interested parties and provide regular updates of new concepts, events, and opportunities to get involved.

Approach to Public Art

icecream architecture believe that the art and design world has an important, challenging and exciting role to play in social, economic and environmental change. This role is not confined to hanging work in conventional galleries but can explored through the active placing of artists, designers and creative thinkers within communities.

Mobility is a central characteristic of our creative practice. Illustrated through the metaphor of the icecream van, an early tool which operated as our studio. This mobility, is literally about placing the group on the curbs of housing schemes and in the heart of town centres. It is also about empowering mobility in the people we work with. This might be through projects that mobilise new connections, confidence or knowledge. Ultimately this understanding of mobility is about ensuring that people are happy, healthy and responsive citizens.

The creation of temporary or permanent public art presents at this point a departure for presenting, communicating and synthesising this approach. icecream architecture bring together a unique cross over between architecture and fine art for the design and development of physical, conceptual and interactive public artworks.

We do not create artwork ‘about’ things, but rather in the ‘response’ to them.

We are not limited to the use of a single medium or form. We develop, share and adapt the skills within the team to suit the interests of the people we work with and the context of the outcomes.

We are not only concerned with the economic value of things. We care about people and places according to their different landscapes and aim to work in ways that explore these in relation to one another, local pride and identity. The social, environmental, heritage and cultural value.

We do not engage with people as a means to an end. We strive to take people on a journey through the process of a project. It is important to us that the artworks are owned. The journey is as relevant to us as the finished pieces. We strive to add value for the people we work with during this, by means of introducing new skills, knowledge or perspectives. Our processes are about humanising.