Why do this?

As a space, could the market square offer more for our growing and diverse community, as well as for the many visitors who are attracted to this unique place every year?

People have great affection for the current market: for stalls selling fruit, vegetables, flowers, plants, cheese, fish, meat, bread, crafts and much more.

But the space is inflexible for evening use. The market area has seen an increase in anti-social behaviour and crime during night time hours.

For a creative challenge, four team members and an artistic lead came together to re-imagine some possibilities for the Cambridge market. As part of the Maker Challenge brought together by the Collusion agency, theatre and film director Marcus Romer has worked with a volunteer team with backgrounds in engineering, product, graphic and web design and event production. This team got together in the Makespace facility in Cambridge and now have ideas to present which we hope will start conversations and stimulate you to share your ideas and visions for the market square.

Our aim was to imagine what would be needed for a more flexible use of the market square. You can see that our models imagine the square:

It was vitally important to us to come up with some very early-stage prototype ideas for market stalls that could be folded, wheeled and stored. These types of stalls would need to be highly robust for daily use. We’d like to imagine stalls that could be assembled and disassembled without difficulty, to allow the market square to offer more as a heart for the city after dark.

Using this creative opportunity to imagine the future, we’d like to ask you what you think of a market square that could have evening uses for special events: a night market, a film screening, a dance event. . . What would your ideal market square look like?