Earlier this month, jmarchitects were part of the team involved in creating an innovative, virtual consultation space for Scottish Borders Council’s new Galashiels Community Campus.

This new education and recreation facility will include a 1000+ pupil secondary school, ASN provision, new swimming and hydrotherapy pools as well as extensive internal and external dry sports provision. The project will also expand, re-imagine and regenerate the town’s Scott Park.

The challenge was to create an engaging community consultation space that adhered to the current Scottish Government’s social distancing guidelines for an Informal Community Consultation. The consultation website will be supplemented with live, online consultation meetings and a set of display boards outlining the proposal within Galashiels’ Transport Interchange building. The ambition is that this virtual platform will be expanded and developed to provide the community with access to information relating to the statutory consultations as well as design development and on-site updates.

Despite devising a solution to a (hopefully) temporary challenge, we are excited to see the response to understand if this new approach to engagement has valuable, long term applications.