Right to Place

02 February 2025

Every street corner is inscribed with seen and unseen rights. Who holds these rights? What do they look like? And where do they manifest most powerfully? Asking the right questions, especially the most difficult ones, becomes essential for a project to deliver justice. Who’s right, what right, and where’s that right?

We Made That’s work is founded in spatial justice. This sometimes contentious term can be approached through a specific understanding and foregrounding of rights. It isn’t just about recognising rights but embedding them into the fabric of projects at a range of scales.

To practice a rights-based design approach is an attempt at finding a common language to understand spatial justice. So we’re bringing others together to help achieve this.

We Made That x Key Cities ‘Right to Place’ partnership

Throughout 2025, We Made That and Key Cities are partnering to explore issues of spatial justice. Key Cities is a diverse, national network of 24 cities. From Bradford to Medway and Exeter to Wrexham, Key Cities works with the government and across the network to develop solutions and provides an authoritative voice and alliance of shared interests right across the country.

Together, we will examine how we can foster fairness and inclusivity across our cities, and engender a sense of accessibility and belonging for all.

We will combine original research and dialogue with built environment professionals, city leaders and community representatives. We will host a series of roundtables across the country, survey Key Cities members and launch a ‘Right to Place’ road map summarising our findings and recommendations.

“Our cities are rich and diverse places, and we understand that for them to flourish and prosper in the long term, it is essential that we foreground the rights of our communities. Our partnership with We Made That will help to raise the profile of this important issue, at a time when equality and inclusivity has never been more important.”

Cllr John Merry, Chair, Key Cities

Sun Pier House, Medway (Philipp Ebeling)

“We recognise rights are implicit in the city’s infrastructure, policies, and economic forces. Having the power to shape or erase them can often feel distant to citizens. Through this partnership, our ambition is to make spatial justice a focal point for delivering meaningful change through placemaking and regeneration.”

Holly Lewis, Co-founding Partner, We Made That

Research in Place x residencies

We will be hosting two research residencies at our London studio in 2025. This open call will offer independent researchers an opportunity to spend time and space developing their work over a 3 month period, exchanging knowledge with our own Urban Research Unit and wider team.

Open call now live. Click here to apply.

Feelings in Place x Dr Clare Rishbeth

We will also be publishing a series of tools from a year-long exploration of experiential and participatory urban design methods with Dr Clare Rishbeth who was seconded to We Made That from the University of Sheffield through an ‘Innovation Scholar’ research grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK. This will be complemented by seminar and sharing events in both Sheffield and London.