Platt Hall is a former textile merchant's house in Rusholme, Manchester, where it has stood for over 250 years. It was built as a family home but has also been a tea room, a work camp, a police headquarters, an art school and an art gallery. For 70 years it was Manchester's much-loved Gallery of Costume until its closure in 2017. Now, the team at Manchester City Galleries are working with the local neighbourhood to re-imagine its future as a place of community, making, creativity and imagination. The work is informed by the ideas of the Arte Útil (Useful Art) movement and asks how we can work within the limitations of an historic building and collection to create a genuinely 'useful museum' for a 21st century community.

I worked with the team for a year as their evaluator and critical friend for the Platt Hall In-between project. It was a fascinating brief: I was asked to explore not just the impact of their work in the local area but to focus on the team's working practices and work with them to question assumptions and facilitate conversations. The work fell into two phases. The first was an investigaton of the project's working methods and organisational structures, asking some hard questions about what needs to change to make Platt Hall a truly responsive neighbourhood resource. The second was a qualitative impact evaluation of the work done so far, based on in-depth evaluation interviews with participants. Following the work at Platt, I've been commissioned to deliver a related project at Manchester Art Gallery to evalaute the gallery's approach to constituent working through two recent projects. I'll be reporting back on that in the autumn. Meanwhile, do take a look at the project website for more information about Platt Hall In-between.