Planning is both a technical and an artistic endeavour. The TCPA has been exploring its artistic heritage in the context of the Garden City movement and environmental education. An acute awareness of the power of art in the creation of places and thinking about social transformation has emerged from this process. You can find out more about the TCPA’s work on Art and Planning here.
Art in the Garden City movement
The pioneers of the Garden City movement put great emphasis on the role of arts and culture in improving wellbeing as part of a co-operative approach to society.
Housing with a heart
To celebrate the end of the Tomorrow 125 project in 2023, the TCPA commissioned an original poem ‘Housing with a heart’ from poet Eileen Gbagbo.
Performance pieces
The TCPA’s performance pieces ‘Love, Life and Liberty’ and ‘Land of Promise’ have demonstrated how the arts can provide a powerful tool for engaging new and existing audiences in the debate about the future and the places we create:
‘Love, Life & Liberty’ is a celebration of the TCPA’s past utopian ideals. These values were artistic, collectivist, cooperative and occasionally eccentric, but most of all they were practical; building real places that immeasurably improved the lives of millions of ordinary people. The readings and songs in ‘Love, Life & Liberty’ give a small taste of the debate about land and freedom which has raged in England since the 17th century.
‘Land of Promise’ is a words and music presentation featuring guest readers, and musicians. It journeys through three and a half centuries of radical thought, writing, and song about the connection between art, social justice and the living environment. Through the words of radical thinkers and activists spanning William Morris and Edward Carpenter to Bruce Springsteen and Benjamin Zephaniah, Land of Promise explores that perpetual but urgent question at a time of global crises – ‘How are we going to live?
