"It has been a pleasure to work with Gary, to have our commission added to his exciting portfolio and I will follow his future activities with great interest."
Vivien Burnside, Arts Co-ordinator, South East Belfast HSS Trust

Creativity and choice - the designs

The design stage actually splits into two stages.
The first stage is my design response to your brief. This might begin with some research into the site or some local history, or even with design workshops in local schools or with community groups.

On the right a workshop involving Medieval re-enactors bringing the history of Gloucester to life for a school design workshop.

Below a school design workshop

Design development can include: Archive research; community consultation; school workshops; community design workshops.
Or even begin with workshops on: creative writing; poetry; photography; reminiscence work.

Once this background work is complete Gary usually begins by roughly sketching ideas out like those here drawn up for Valentines Park in Ilford.

These are then developed into a selection of about three design options an example of which is shown below.

These options aim to explore the same brief in differing ways and these are then presented to you, so that you can choose the direction that you feel is right. At this stage alterations and revisions can also be suggested.

If you are happy with one of these design options Gary will then go away and draw up the final design based on your selection and any adjustments requested. Here is the final design from the selection above, the human figure on the side has been drawn in to give a better indication of scale to the design.