The document summarizes a community event held in Birkenhead, UK to discuss the future of the town. Participants engaged in interactive activities like mapping local assets, writing what the future could look like, and discussing challenges and opportunities in small groups. A panel discussion then addressed questions from the audience. Key themes from the event included the need to include more community voices, concerns about gentrification, and the potential of projects like improving parks and transportation to drive regeneration in an equitable way.

1. The future is...
Birkenhead

2. We’d like to thank all of our participants for their
contriubutions to this event.
We’d also like to thank our collaborators for shaping
and contributing to the event and Wirral Council for
their support.
Cover image: panel speakers and audience members.
Photo credit: Fiona Finchett @fionafinchett.
August 2022
Credits and thanks

3. 1
‘The Future is… Birkenhead’ event was held at
Future Yard, Birkenhead on 13 July 2022. The event
was devised by a team of people who care about
Birkenhead and the built environment. The event was
convened by Common Good who promoted it as part
of their series of events across the North of England. It
was supported by the Left Bank Collective, including
Future Yard, Convenience Gallery, Make CIC and
Open Door Charity.
PLACED were invited to be involved in the planning
and the facilitation of part of the event. Those who
organised the event did so largely in their own time
and on a pro-bono basis. The event was supported by
Wirral Council.
‘The future is... Birkenhead’
This report tries to bring together some of the
conversation which happened on the night. However,
we think it is important to remember three things:
1. This is only one event, and this report only reflects
what we heard from the people we reached.
There are more people to reach out to.
2. Conversations and work on the future of
Birkenhead have been going on for many years
with many dedicated people. Safe to say,
shaping the future of Birkenhead is an ongoing
project and this event was only one part of that
process.
3. More discussions were had between participants
which aren’t captured here, and this report is
not a definitive record. We hope this event kick
started new ideas and new collaborations.
Introduction
Image: a group of people chatting in the bar area of Future Yard. Photo credit: Fiona Finchett @fionafinchett.

4. 2
For those able to join the event from 4pm, a walking
tour took people around some of the Left Bank
Collective locations around Birkenhead. This gave
participants a great introduction and grounding
in some of the innovative, grassroots and socially
motivated action taking place in Birkenhead.
The walking tour included, Make CIC, The Bloom
Building and ended at Future Yard.
Images (anti-clockwise from top left): people walk
through Hamilton Square by the Queen Victoria
Monument, a group of people in a bar/café space,
and two people with bikes in a garden area. Photo
credit: Jaimie Ferguson @Jaimieferg.
Images (opposite page): two images of people
drawing on a white board, and marker pens, cloths
and instructions ready for participants to use. Photo
credit: Fiona Finchett @fionafinchett.
Walking tour

5. 3
The event at Future Yard kicked off with a series of
interactive activities, including mapping, writing,
voting, and questions developed by PLACED, along
with inviting people to draw on light box panels
provided by Convenience Gallery. Here we’ve
summarised the responses received through the
interactive elements.
1. What does the future of Birkenhead look like to
you?
Convenience Gallery brought their light box panels
to encourage and enable artistic expression amongst
participants. Pens were offered and participants
invited to draw or write what they thought the future of
Birkenhead looked like, creating a communal mural.
Some of the contributions included drawings illustrating
the effects of climate change on the Wirral, water
sports, cycles and Birknhead Town Hall. Participants
also wrote words like, colourful, dynamic and inclusive.
Interactive activities

6. 4
2. The regeneration puzzle
Each participant was given a puzzle piece and
asked what they thought was needed for successful
grassroots regeneration. We added all their ideas to
our communal puzzle.
Ideas included:
• Restoring walkability, (re)connecting one side of
the town to the other.
• Affordable spaces for growing/emerging
business and continuous increase in footfall.
• Remove the ‘car park’ feel and connect people
through cycling and walking.
• Use ferry to get tourists to do walking tours in the
area.
• Make walking and cycling options attractive.
Benches, street trees and cycle repair and
storage.
• Public transport providers need to work to
support visits to the area – it’s easy to get here
but people think it’s not.
• Using heritage and historical buildings in
regeneration.
• Make sure assets are owned by the community
so that they can reap the dividends from their
success.
• Don’t compete with, but work with and alongside
Liverpool! Better connections to assets.
• Accessible spaces.
• Birkenhead needs to retain and utilise more
collaborative spaces to encourage existing
local innovators to invest in the area. Short
term low rents and lots of opportunities to
collaborate.
• BELIEF
• Less highway space and more facilities for
pedestrians and cyclists and more trees!
• A space for people, not cars.
• Pop-up retail. Low rent, manageable spaces
offering short, medium and long-term leases to
start ups. Creating a dynamic and vibrant street
scape.
• An understanding of cultural policy and its power
to be a catalyst.
• Get rid of all the concrete and tarmacked space
and link up the great assets and signposting to
them!
• Creating a high street using street near future
yard.
Image: a person placing a puzzle piece with comments written on. Photo credit: Fiona Finchett @fionafinchett.

7. 5
Image: multi-coloured puzzle pieces with comments written on. Photo Credit: Sam Hayes @DrSamHayes1

8. 6

9. 7
3. Mapping the assests across Birkenhead
To understand more about and remind ourselves of the
existing assets in Birkenhead, we asked participants to
use our pin board map to show and label the places,
spaces, and organisations which they thought were
assets, or could be in the future. In no particular order,
this is our collective list:
• PEOPLE
• Grange Road West (Birkenhead’s Bold
Street)
• UK’s longest promenade
• Eureka
• Seacombe Ferry
• East Float
• Belfast Ferry
• Dock system
• Randall Street Tunnel Entrance
• American Civil Wat Heritage Trail
• ENA PA
• One O’clock Gun
• Historic Tramway
• Ventilation Tower
• Wirral Wave Radio
• Wirral Mencap
• U-Boat Story
• Hamilton Square
• Birkenhead Priory
• Pink Sands Studio
• Café 32
• Start Yard
• Transport Shed
• Dock Branch Park
• Glen Affric
• Convenience Gallery
• Future Yard
• Make CIC
• Bloom Building
• Open Door Charity
• Grand Entrance
• Equilibrium CIC
• Birkenhead Park Visitors’ Centre
• Parkrun!
• The Hive
• Tranmere Tunnels
• Cammell Laird Central Park
• Bidston Moss Woodland and Nature Area
• Bidston Hill
• Bidston Observatory
• Flaybrick Cemetery
• Tam O’Shanter Urban Farm
• Ron’s Place
• Williamson Art Gallery
• Listed Docks
Image (opposite page): Drawing pins on a map of Birkenhead. Photo credit: Fiona Finchett @fionafinchett.

10. 8
4. Quick-fire questions and voting
We asked a set of quick-fire questions and gave
participants tokens and post-it notes to vote and share
their thoughts. Intended as a ‘straw poll’ rather than
definitive answers, it offered a great starting point to
some big questions.
Other suggestions included:
• Adding a commercial element to continue
without funding.
• Land banking.
• Delays in planning process.
• Landowners who only care about financial
profit.
• Lack of imagination.
Apathy
Lack of money
Slow pace of change
Other
What are the key primers for regeneration that will
help change happen?
Other suggestions included:
• Social ‘energy’ in that it takes people to make
things happen, e.g., the panel tonight.
• Embracing dynamic leadership.
• CREATIVITY.
• Sustainability.
• The golden 3!
Towns Fund money
Social economy/enterprise
Council attitude
Other
What are the barriers to regeneration?
Graphs: three pie charts showing the responses of
participants to our quick-fire questions.
Images (opposite page): person writing a comment on
a post it note and blue and yellow vote tokens. Photo
credit: Fiona Finchett @fionafinchett.

11. 9
Are there stumbling blocks to regeneration?
(particularly for grassroots organisations)
Other suggestions included:
• Grassroots organisations not owning freehold of
their own space.
• Communication and engagement with the
public.
• Lack of an open heart and an open mind.
• Political bickering.
• Lack of resources in local authorities (not
necessarily money).
• Perception of whether ‘regeneration’ is positive
or not.
• Lack of skills for bid writing.
Mission creep
Expanding or growing
Longevity
Other

12. 10
A panel discussion with a difference. We drew our
panel from our audience in a format we called
‘rotating debating’. The aim being to include as many
voices on our panel as possible and cycle through
multiple four person panels during the 1-hour time slot.
Our questions were submitted by the audience and
drawn - tombola style - as we went along.
Our audience panel included planners, architects,
social enterprise owners, Birkenhead residents,
support workers, and academics. Thanks to David
Roberts (Common Good) for chairing and to our 16
panellists; Andrew Ruffolo, David Humphreys, Richard
MacDonald, Christine Bithell, Malarkey Buck, Aiden
Semple, Olivia Ryan, John Forbes, Rich O’Neill,
Lucy Gara, Natalya Edwards, Mell Wilson, Shannon
Conway, Ryan Gauge, Paul Harris and Greg Dickson.
Panel conversation and audience questions
We also collected a large set of questions from the
audience which we couldn’t get to in our 1-hour slot.
Below is a record of all the audience questions, both
those posed and not.
1. How do you build in a commercial element to
the regeneration to ensure projects continue
when the funding runs out?
2. When was the last time you came to
Birkenhead?
3. How many future-yards does a regeneration
neighbourhood need?
4. What excites you most about the future of the
area?
5. What will success look like in 15 years?
6. With regeneration often follows gentrification,
how can we manage this?
7. How do we ensure new infrastructure reduces
inequalities?
8. There are a lot of people in Birkenhead who
don’t buy in to the regeneration project. How do
we convince them?
9. How do we make Birkenhead more distinctive
from Liverpool? Is this going to get worse before
it gets better?
10. If you could be given an asset / vacant land,
with limited resources, what would you develop
/ want?
1
1. How much money do you need / want?
12. Where are the 1,000s of high value jobs coming
from?
13. How will we measure how inclusive Birkenhead
will be for people with disabilities?
14. How can we make sure community spaces are
used by harder to reach communities?
Image: One of our speakers with a microphone. Photo
credit: Fiona Finchett @fionafinchett.

13. 1
1
15. There is so much going on, how can we ensure
there is consistency and joined up thinking
between the various projects? Seamless
transitions!
16. Can we close the Birkenhead Tunnel to cars and
use it for cyclists, pedestrians and a busway
only?
17. Regeneration can often be disruptive for
established communities (however small), how
can equity be built into regeneration schemes
to ensure they don’t trip into ‘gentrification’ and
dissociate people from their places?
18. Birkenhead has received a lot of grant funding.
Are you worried about the current uncertainty at
central government?
19. We have a lot of history, culture and beauty to
give. How can we sell Birkenhead (and Wirral)
to others around the country / word?
20. It is 2030 Birkenhead. What is happening
/ being developed that feels too difficult /
unviable today?
21. With a need and desire for Birkenhead to be
regenerated, how do we retain the heritage
of a gritty and exciting city and not force
gentrification?
22. With regeneration of Birkenhead there
will inevitably be a knock on effect on the
surrounding areas (Prenton, New Ferry, Rock
Ferry). Is there a strategy and available funding
in-place to address this?
23. Could there be an opportunity to involve
university students in projects?
24. How impactful will Dock Branch Park be for the
town?
25. Are social enterprises a catalyst for regeneration
or is it the other way around?
26. Is the word ‘regeneration’ OK? Should we have
a better word, and if so, what should we be
saying?*
27. How do you justify spending the large capital
spend involved in programmes like Birkenhead
Town Deal / Levelling-up at a time when people
are struggling financially?*
28. Are we doing enough to ensure that change in
Birkenhead is tackling the climate emergency?
Are we ambitious enough?*
29. How do we ensure that investment in Birkenhead
doesn’t simply lead to gentrification and prices
people out of local housing, services and
amenities?*
30. What does levelling up mean for
Birkenhead?*
31. How do we make sure that the money being
spent really does level-up Birkenhead?*
*Questions added by PLACED as starter questions.
Image: Participant writing notes. Photo credit: Fiona
Finchett @fionafinchett.

14. 12
Conclusions
Our discussion covered many topics, and our panellists
offered a range of views which might not be endorsed
by everyone. However, we have tried to summarise
some of the themes and talking points here.
Words matter – ‘regeneration’ and ‘gentrification’
Regeneration as a term can be complicated,
problematic and can exclude people. This relates to
further comments about including people in discussions
about the future. Working in a bottom-up way could
help to create change which is not cookie cutter
‘regeneration’. One suggestion to avoid regeneration
as a term was ‘Birkenhead reborn’.
Related to some of these discussions were several
questions and responses about gentrification. It was
highlighted that gentrification is potentially already
happening. Community ownership and social housing
were suggested as crucial to make sure there are
alternatives to private rented sector and buying.
Reducing inequalities was also noted, suggested
measures included cycle ways, working with people,
making sure local people benefit from new jobs
created, and tackling community scale issues or
concerns like health inequalities or skills.
Talk to more people
Across several answers and responses, we heard
about the importance of including people in
discussions about the future of Birkenhead and the
processes of change. Working in a bottom-up way
could ensure change is understood and locally rooted.
This included social enterprises which can bring new
enthusiasm, local knowledge and are situated in
Birkenhead. Also, local communities, residents, young
people and teenagers, students, and academics can
all bring fresh outlooks.
To enable participation in such discussions and in life
more broadly, making sure that community spaces are
accessible to people from harder to reach groups is
also important.
Communicate a vision and shout about Birkenhead
One panellist suggested that we should remember that
the aim is not simply to change the place, but to have
a vision for the place in the future. Communicating
that vision is then really important. People need to
understand the change. It is important to acknowledge
that change is difficult. However, some things have not
changed in a long time in some parts of the town and
change is needed for local people.
It is important not to forget some of great things
about Birkenhead (see the many places and spaces
highlighted on our map). Suggestions included
Birkenhead’s heritage such as Birkenhead Priory
and Birkenhead Park, musical heritage (it’s not all
Liverpool!), and sport. Shout about these assets more.
Key projects (some happening, some still need
developing)
Dock Branch Park could be transformative, bringing
the tangible and intangible benefits green spaces can
for urban areas. Improving the transport infrastructure,
particularly walking and cycling, and connectivity
across Wirral, was discussed. Being able to walk and
cycle through the Birkenhead tunnel was suggested.
The need to remove previous generations of car heavy
infrastructure was also part of this discussion.
It was suggested that by 2030 there should be more
retail on offer, more housing, and more independent
businesses. Trying not to separate out Birkenhead from
the rest of the Wirral or the City Region is important, as
is connecting with Liverpool as part of the future.
Politics
In the midst of turbulent national politics, it is important
to scrutinise the debates or bigger picture too, e.g., the
levelling-up agenda.
At the local level, the presence of politicians, including
MPs and Councillors, listening to and participating in
such discussions was also considered important.

15. 13
Climate Change
Getting the right policy in place was felt to be
important. Making sure that we’re policy-led, and
perhaps more stick than carrot. Ensuring that climate
change is well placed in policy and sticking to it so that
new development responds properly was suggested.
There is space for innovation.
Changing consumer behaviour is also part of the
climate change challenge. As is getting big business on
board.
Image: Audience members listening to our speakers. Photo credit: Fiona Finchett @fionafinchett.

16. 14

17. 15
We also asked participants to share their takeaway
messages or conclusions from the event. Here’s what
we were told:
• Would / should Birkenhead be the central
hub for Wirral regeneration to bridge the M53
divide?
• Great event. Would be good to see a short
series across a few days to get a greater
spectrum of people.
• Advocacy.
• Talk it up.
• Help change perceptions of the place.
• Learn from its best practice.
• Offer support in a pro-bono capacity as believe
in changing perceptions of Birkenhead.
• Visit more (events).
• Safe sphere. Construction, Design and
Management consultants helping projects to be
safe and save money.
• Really good to be at a semi-professional,
semi-social event and hear a genuine mix of
opinions!
• Great event! Please remember people with
disabilities, learning disabilities or people
neurodiverse when thinking about community.
People who draw on support can be assets
too.
Participant takeaways Next steps
We will be sharing this report with Wirral Council and
being part of more events to bring people together in
Birkenhead, Wirral and Liverpool City Region.
As something of a parting thought we’ll finish with this
observation from one of our panellists.
“It’s the right time, right place for Birkenhead.
It’s a really exciting time!”
Image (opposite page): Audience members listening to our speakers. Photo credit: Fiona Finchett @fionafinchett.

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