After 2 years of operating the Greyhope Bay Centre, we are ready to grow
Since 2022, our popular cafe has run community events, creative workshops, and educational visits that have exceeded our expectations.
In 2023, we decided that we needed more space to meet the increasing demand for workshops, programmes and activities. We embarked on quite an ambitious and unique approach to growing, a participatory and co-creative one with people to co-design the extension of the facilities and a create comprehensive energy solution for the site.
This is a two-year programme that we called Phase 2 Design and that will culminate in March 2025 with an approved final design and a green energy solution.
In April 2024, we finished the first round of 8 months of community-led co-creation workshops to co-design expansion plans for the project .The co-created concept design developed by our community includes:
expanding the centre to the east, taking in further views of Girdleness Lighthouse and looking back at Torry Battery. This expansion will allow for a multi-purpose indoor space (bigger cafe, space for workshops and educational visits)
developing the old guard house into an exhibition space
recreating the storerooms/houses as an outdoor market space
The concept honours the site's outdoor nature, improves accessibility to explore the heritage of the entire site, and importantly incorporates the repair and consolidation of the monument.
Why co-creation?
We believe that people who use a place are in the best position to design solutions that meet their needs.
Our work is about facilitating collective thinking to design solutions with people that connect them to the coast, environment and heritage.
We are putting together a guide on how to co-create with people scalable solutions that empower communities and their connection to the coast.
If you are interested to hear about the process and learn how you can implement it in your organisation, contact us at hello@greyhopebay.com
How does it work?
You can join our workshops face-to-face or online.
We have a conceptual design for our expansion based on a huge input of over 50 design ideas collated from our six co-creation events held to date.
At the next series of events in February (27th and 28th) and March (26th and 27th) we will have the next iteration of the design and will seek more ideas and design input from you to advance the concept. We then plan to be ready with a full design concept to launch and celebrate on our 2 year anniversary of opening in April.
Co-creation event format:
We make a presentation of the work that has been done so far, so everybody is on the same page, we then give you some questions, interactive maps and concepts that will help the design move forward.
We allocate some time for Q&A with Gokay the architect.
We gather the information and ideas and Gokay and his team get back to his study to work on the next design.
If you would like to contribute and co-create with us, register for our next event
REGISTER FOR NEXT EVENT HERE How are we funded?
Our design work, co-creative process and feasibility for PHASE 2 is funded through the UK Government Levelling up programme awarded by Aberdeen City Council.
.png)
