Unlock the latest placemaking ideas to drive footfall
Placemaking is the art of transforming spaces into vibrant destinations to help drive economic growth, footfall and engagement and promote happiness within towns, cities and shopping centres. Field and Lawn have been transforming public spaces for over 35 years, working in partnership with public and private sector organisations across a range of industries to deliver a broad range of placemaking solutions, including flags, banners, bunting, experiential displays and wayfinding. We have the skills, expertise, and experience to support you with any placemaking project – if you can dream it, we can bring it to life!
How can placemaking help high streets?
Before we get into the tips, creative placemaking is an incredibly important tool for public spaces as it has been proven to boost local businesses, increase social interaction, and promote a better quality of life for residents. It also encourages destination marketing through social media and short-form video, sharing the joy of these creative initiatives with the masses and increasing awareness through online discussion.
Similarly, placemaking can harness the power of influencer marketing, using the vast platforms of online personalities and creators to spread the word about existing destinations throughout the country. We uncover some of the proven practices destination marketeers can deploy to draw crowds and capture attention.
5 ways to improve your high street aesthetics
1. Outdoor flags
Our outdoor flags are designed to transform high streets, town centres and public spaces, making them vibrant, socially inclusive, and economically sustainable places. Custom flags may often evoke thoughts of summer festivals or cultural and creative installations, but they can be used to create a simple splash of colour in a variety of applications, from high streets to lamp post columns.
2. Street banners
Banners are a great way to get your brand or event front and centre among your desired audience. If you want to drive sales, promote an event, get an important message across or increase brand awareness, installing bespoke street banners is the way to make sure your message stands out on a busy high street.
3. Decorative bunting
Simple and easy to install, decorative bunting is an effective way to add a touch of character to any street. Whether you’re looking to promote an event, increase your brand awareness, or add a pop of colour to your town or city, our team are on hand with a host of bespoke and ready-to-hire solutions to help you create the perfect display.
FLAGS, BANNERS AND BUNTING IN FOCUS
Used together or separately, banners, flags and bunting are a creative way to get people talking about your high street or town centre. Find out which option will be best for your space and objectives and read our idea guide to banners, flags and bunting for more inspiration.
4. Umbrella Sky Installations
An umbrella sky installation is a proven, high-impact solution designed to get people talking, and taking photos.
Its success comes from a powerful combination of visual spectacle, emotional engagement, and clever installation, using void space to the best effect.
Experiential displays breathe life into new spaces. They captivate audiences, ignite curiosity, create connections and draw in visitors, encouraging them to look up and explore. People actively seek out unique experiences and this option turns an ordinary high street or shopping centre atrium into an art gallery experience, encouraging people to plan a visit to witness it themselves. The repetition of colour, symmetry, and scale creates the perfect backdrop for photos and video and will help your destination marketing go viral.
5. Street decorations and art installations
Street decorations are not just for Christmas (but we do also design and install them!) They are a perfect way to decorate a public space and make your high street a landmark by inspiring connection through the power of colour.
Thanks to our partnership with Impact Plan Art Productions, we have a wonderful brochure of creative placemaking options such as our sustainable colour rain, captivating bubble sky and floral sky garden, which will give people a reason to return time after time. The Magic Carpet solution is particularly impressive as it can provide much-needed solar shading during the hottest summer months to keep pedestrians cool under a canopy of dancing colours.
Download the full placemaking brochure
What are the outcomes of placemaking interventions?
Placemaking can have a proven positive impact on high streets from simple sentiment analysis and social media outcomes to footfall and local spend impact. We recently partnered with Impact Plan Art productions to share a case study on how placemaking has delivered a positive local legacy in Portugal, something that can be replicated here in the UK. Through clever design and creativity, a 23 day festival, AgitÁgueda, supported by creative placemaking interventions contributed 7.8m Euros to the local economy and brought in over 940,000 visitors to Agueda.
We are delighted to bring a collection of wonderful high-impact placemaking solutions to the UK market, courtesy of Impact Plan. To discover more, watch the webinar to see how you can unlock growth through placemaking, get in touch with the experts to maximise your reach.
Field and Lawn can support you with all aspects of the placemaking and city dressing
At Field and Lawn, we’re incredibly proud of our portfolio of projects across all our business divisions. Still, when it comes to placemaking it’s only natural that we have a few favourites!
One of our most notable projects, ‘Colour Rain’ at Bath Southgate transported shoppers into a magical underwater world and guided them through the shopping and dining area with 150m of colourful ribbons in a unique, immersive experience. Hidden throughout the vibrant installation were 116 fish, each one carefully placed within the display and adding to displays interactive qualities.
Our client was looking to drive commercial outcomes by helping to increase footfall, improve the overall visitor experience and encourage people to stay and explore more of what Bath Southgate has to offer. It also aimed to promote a recycle-first mindset among visitors thanks to a larger-than-life recycling container fish, and all ribbons were made from recycled plastic.
The activation was designed to be a social-first ‘shareable moment’ which would generate organic content and visibility through photos and short-form video captured beneath the installation. The display gained thousands of views across TikTok and Instagram, promoting not only its unique concept, but its strong environmental message too.
Positive social media engagement at Bath Southgate
The feel good factor is real when it comes to placemaking, with visitors flocking to social platforms to share their experience after visiting our installations. But what type of social media engagement can you expect to see? We analysed the social media sentiment during our recent colour rain installation in Bath. Needless to say, it got hundreds of mentions, thousands of views and some amazing feedback from visitors and shoppers.
These installations are...
- Lightweight and durable, suitable for most existing infrastructure
- Commercial grade products designed for large areas and long-term use
- Rapid, disruption free installation completed by our experienced in-house teams
- Flexible to suit streets, shopping centres and open public spaces
When and how to install your city dressing displays
Field and Lawn placemaking solutions are suitable for a variety of activations year-round, but if you’re unsure on when and how to install your city-dressing displays, a site consultation is the perfect place to start. One of our experienced Project Managers will visit your site to assess your requirements and discuss the best option for your activation.
Late summer is a popular option among our clients as public spaces are generally busier, providing an ideal opportunity to take advantage of increased traffic and attention. August to November is also a popular option, as existing infrastructure can be used to easily swap summer installations for seasonal lighting solutions as the season approaches, with the added benefit of savings on removal costs.
About field and lawn
Field and lawn are experts at delivering a broad range of placemaking projects and services, working with our clients throughout the whole process, from initial discussions through to delivery and installation. Our multidisciplinary, in-house team are highly experienced and knowledgeable, combining a blend of creativity, operational expertise and a commitment to health, safety and sustainability in everything they do.
Our national branch network means that you’re never too far from the support of our incredible teams. From Scotland to London and everywhere in between, we’ve got you covered for all your placemaking requirements no matter what the season. Find your local branch here.
