ABSTRACT
The financial crunch in 2009 led Thomas Ermacora to adapt, setting up Clear Village, specialising in integrated, participatory, process-driven interventions to help places reinvent themselves and build social cohesion, through high-level strategic consulting for social landlords, community groups and local authorities. Finding limitations with commissioning models, and having diversified his time as a new media and technology investor-entrepreneur, Ermacora felt there was a need to shift his role in the field of urbanism and architecture towards social issues. Over the years Ermacora has registered the evolution in placemaking tactics. In the UK, among the decimating effects of the financial crisis of 2009 was the closure of many community centres on housing estates and others funded by local authorities. An initial organisation called Rollmop Art was set up with the support of Centre for Innovation and Voluntary Action (CIVA) representative Chris Vaughan, to activate space on the Regent Estate in Hackney.
