Community

Community is one of the six Footprint© dimensions, and a key pillar of igloo’s “for People, Place and Planet” ethos. For every project, the Footprint process starts at day one – engaging with stakeholders and neighbours to co-create a vision for each site we develop. The Pattern Shop has been no different. From the outset we have strived to maximise the magical qualities of the heritage spaces to create a place where everyone feels welcome, connected to their neighbours and are a part of the wider site and city community.

The process begins with looking at the physical space. Finding opportunities to create a welcoming, personal entrance
that is accessible to all, with meeting spaces and communal areas that facilitate incidental and informal meeting spaces
throughout the building.

This has manifested into our winter garden balconies, undercroft event space, meeting pod areas and interior designed entrance area – all providing opportunities for tenants and visitors to meet and get to know each other informally and feel part of the buildings community, whilst also providing the chance for planned social activity, for collaboration and sharing of knowledge and resources. During the construction phase, we began an engagement programme with our neighbours at the University Technical College (UTC) to connect the students with the businesses involved in developing the Pattern Shop.

We hope to continue this programme with tenants to develop the students skills, facilitate access to the local workforce and build young people’s aspirations, with a long term vision of retaining talent in the North East. This can be achieved through twinning programmes and a series of training, work experience and mentoring opportunities. We took part in the 2022 series of ‘The Late Shows’ to open up the building to the general public and showcase the city’s incredible heritage asset to as many people as possible. The feedback was fantastic and we are looking forward to opening up the building to the public again at the 2023 series on Saturday 20th May, this time with the renovation works complete!

Once tenants start to occupy the building, we will work with Knight Frank as managing agents, using their in-house expertise, to curate a series of collaboration and networking opportunities throughout the year, including events, pop ups, open days, wellbeing workshops and awareness initiatives.