We Make Places were invited to speak at the Royal Town Planning Institute (NW) Urban Design Forum which took place at the Racquets Club in Liverpool on September 23rd
We were asked to set a bit of a challenge and provoke debate…….sounds unlike us I know!
We chose the title “Allowing Communities to Make Their Places” and we presented the case for meaningful participation rather than traditional consultation; picking up on the themes in our Power of Tea blog
Our approach to presentations is mainly image based, so putting our presentation online for you isn’t going to tell you much, however the one slide with a bit of text on that you may find interesting was:
We presented recent examples of how we have engaged with hard to reach communities or brought together opposing groups within a community to reach a consensus around a development project. We talked about some recent projects including:
In conlusion we encouraged the audience of planners, architects and developers to:
- Listen (don’t draw)
- Be Brave
- Put the Kettle on!
- Doing WITH is better than doing TO
- Build successful, resilient communities that people want to live in and contribute to
We know there will have been those that didn’t get it at all, but we had some great conversations afterwards with those that did and some great tweets too –
all in all a great opportunity for us to spread the word and encourage practitioners to push themselves and involve communities
