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locally-led placemaking and community buildingMaking the places we are in the places we want them to be underpins our approach to placemaking. We work in participatory ways to understand what matters to local people. Then we bring skilled expertise alongside them so they can be a part of making awesome positive changes in their places in ways that work for them and which build resilience and regeneration in both communities and systems.
Our process often uses tactical urbanism approaches to test ideas in low-risk ways and empower local people by growing agency. Projects may be small or short term, but, by working this way, they build reslience and regeneration in both communities and systems. |
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community-led planning and actionLocal communities bring the kind of expertise that no professional can have outside of their own place. Plans and activities that effectively include community members alongside professionals in ways community members can positively contribute to, and even lead, are likely to be more relevant to and welcomed in that community. They can also bring the best of both lived experience and specialist knowledge together. We work with communities, groups and organisations to help generate clear pathways towards collective intentions, visions and goals.
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Research & Co-designNothing happens that wasn’t first a dream. We help groups better understand what matters locally, what has gone before, what works elsewhere and why as well as why people want to work together, what they want to achieve and how they can most effectively go about. It often includes both strategic and emergent practice.
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Participatory evaluationNoticing and assessing what happens and what differences it makes (and for who) as changes happen is key to informing further development and change. Drawing on developmental evaluation principles, we look for a wide range of outcomes including those related to participation, process, progress, new possibilities, people and policy. You can read more about these here. And we are as much interested in the journey as we are in the outcomes, because it is often the contributing factors of the journey that give us the ingredients for replication, adaptation to different contexts and evolution as things change.
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FacilitationIndependent facilitation can help you reach potential you didn’t even know was there. Our facilitation can help draw ideas out and develop them collectively, overcome obstacles, keep things moving in positive and compassionate ways and foster deep collaboration in generously interactive, fun ways that are reflexive and also pragmatic.
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mentoring and coachingSometimes the skills and resources we need for transformative change are hiding in plain sight. This is when a different perspective or approach can be really useful. We offer tailored mentoring in creative community engagement, locally-led change strategies, participatory community building, planning and action to help activate things that are at our fingertips already and those that we may need to bring in.
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GROWING CAPABILITYThe way we work builds on and grows the skills, experiences and perspectives that already exist. We are always learning and we love to share ideas, ways of doing things and results. Resources we develop are offered at no cost and, from time to time, we run events, courses and workshops to grow local skills, share understandings and broaden perspectives, including our own. We use a wide range of frameworks and models in our work and like to generate hybrids with local people to best fit the particular context.
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We have been working in communities of all kinds for over 20 years in the areas of neighbourhood regeneration, social cohesion, locally-led change and sustainability, access and disability, community development, activation and placemaking.
So, if what you are after is not listed here, we still might be able to help. Give us a call and let’s have a chat.
So, if what you are after is not listed here, we still might be able to help. Give us a call and let’s have a chat.
