Monday 4th December saw an evening which combined a fascinating exploration of railway heritage brought back to life with YoCo’s 2024 AGM – one of those facts of life of being a constituted body, in YoCo’s case a Company Limited by Guarantee (CLG).

AGMs rarely get the pulse racing, but we made ours a celebration of a fascinating year and paired it with an illustrated talk by Tim Hedley-Jones, Director of the Railway Heritage Trust (and a York resident). The Trust has almost forty years’ experience of supporting organisations to restore and re-use our railway heritage from waiting rooms to water towers.

A guest blog by local artist Ealish Wilson, about the chances that come from saying yes, and the value of an incubator space when you start off in business.

YoCo and partners will be on-site to talk about community-led neighbourhoods as part of the The Radix Big Tent Ideas Festival 2023: REGENERATE.

Join us on the day for a fun family-friendly, map-based "Day in the Life of" activity to collaboratively inform and design a new community-owned and led neighbourhood.

What would be a good proposal for ownership of public space, and what would people want to do there?

As with YoCo’s thinking about homes and workplaces, the issue of ownership (and with it thinking around economy and governance) is central to thinking about open space. “Taking ownership” is a phrase often used, but often used to mean “you looking after the space we continue to own”. Back when YoCo’s community plan for York Central was developed, we talked a lot about co-ownership – could the “Great Park” instead be “The Commons” – and recent conversations with one of the shortlisted developers prompted us to revisit these.

YoCo has had a long-standing relationship with the Interior Design course at York St.John University. In 2023 we worked with tutor Emma Ramsden-Sharman to explore creative responses to the Foundry buildings. Here’s how the students on BA (Hons) Interior Design Level 6 tackled it.