Anke de Vrieze

With the SUSPLACE project coming to an end on September 30th 2019, it’s time to look back and reflect on what we learnt. Not only in terms of scientific insights, but also in terms of our own learning journey as a consortium.
In the past 3 years, consultancy RoyalHaskoningDHV (RHDHV) supported SUSPLACE’s learning journey. Job van den Berg and Jantine Zwinkels, together with the SUSPLACE coordination team, co-created and facilitated the learning journey roadmap and facilitated workshops during joint meetings of the partners. This facilitation supported collaboration, provided direction, and created shared ownership.

This guide sets out why place-based participation can help to deliver more sustainable futures and how policy-makers and practitioners across a range of different policy areas can support this through well-designed participative work with communities.

Taking the practical examples from the work of SUSPLACE and the knowledge of its partners , this interactive PDF allows you to read the guide as a normal paper or to navigate ‘web-style’ through the ideas and examples. It introduces the benefits and do’s and don’ts of place-based working and of co-producing outcomes with communities. It guides you through the process of planning place-based working and it offers a menu of different participative methods to suit different aims and needs. All the methods are illustrated with case study examples to bring them to life and all have links to the fuller cases to allow you check their relevance to your own context.

During the SUSPLACE Final Event, I hosted a practice session called ‘Rooting to Place by Reinterpreting Art’. In this blog, I reflect upon the method I used and present the visual outcomes of the workshop. The method, called Mätäsmetäs, was based on a project that took place in 2014 in three recreational forest areas. The main idea of the project was to reinterpret forest themed art in literature in the forest areas. For #SUSPLACE2019, a new adaptation was created: this time the sources were pieces of art and culture related to the history of Tampere.

The scene is set.  We are running out of time.  The quadruple squeeze – population growth, ecosystem degradation, climate change and the added element of surprise – demands urgent and transformational change.  Yet, with an increasingly polarised societal debate, how do we manage change in a way that brings societies together and for people and communities to be more empowered to determine their own futures?

From May 8 -10, 2019 the SUSPLACE Final Event was held in Tampere, Finland. The event addressed the theme of ‘Exploring Places and Practices through Transformative Methods’. To harvest knowledge and outcomes, we asked some participants to write a short blog post capturing their experiences. Find below the first blog, written by Rubén Vezzoni, Early Stage Research Fellow in MSCA ITN RECOMS.

How to re-develop a neighborhood market in a sustainable and creative way? In September 2018, Kalnciema Quarter invited the SUSPLACE consortium to think along and develop a set of practical ideas and policy proposal for the re-development of Agenskalns market, Riga. Together with local stakeholders and experts, the SUSPLACE team addressed 3 challenges: 1) How can stakeholders work together effectively? How to develop new forms of private-public partnerships and foster co-operation at the local and national level? 2)How to build an identity for Agenskalns market, promoting the reputation of a cultural and historic place? 3)What models of sustainable financing are available? Watch the embedded video for an impression and summary of the event.