Planning for Real

The second year of our Planning for Real Leonardo project involves our European partner countries delivering Planning for Real workshops in their own communities and then running real-life projects to test out and refine the methodology.

Our Planning for Real consultant, Gill Hutchinson, travelled out to Denizli, Turkey in November to join our Turkish colleagues and support them in delivering their two day Planning for Real workshop. This workshop was for a group of local facilitators to be trained in the methodology and they will then go on to support the delivery of the real-life project.

Over the coming weeks we will also be visiting partners in Italy, Poland and France as they get underway with their local facilitator training and real-life projects.

You can click on this link to read the press release from our Turkish partners, Denizli Metropolitan Municipality.

The Planning for Real Unit is delighted to be working with The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWTC) and Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust on the four year £1.25m EU Life+ funded Waders for Real project. This is a pioneering project to reverse the decline in lapwing numbers in the Avon Valley

The aim of the Waders for Real project is to increase the breeding success of lapwings and redshank, so that more young are fledged and numbers of breeding pairs start to increase. It is hoped that wader population recovery will be demonstrated through innovative site management and novel stakeholder engagement. The project will involve the trial, monitoring, evaluation, adaptation and implementation of the ‘Planning for Real’ approach for the sustainable delivery of conservation actions.

You can find out more about this project on the EU LIFE programme website or the GWCT website and there is a news article about it on the Farmers Weekly website.

Last month the Planning for Real (PFR) Unit hosted a study visit for representatives from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Development in Wroclaw, Poland and The City of Reykjavik. We were asked to arrange this visit after Margaret Wilkinson, Head of the PFR Unit travelled to Poland in September this year to deliver a keynote speech at the DiverCITY conference

The focus of the study tour was community involvement in the shaping of urban space and we put together an itinerary which showcased different scales of projects and different approaches to community participation.

As part of the visit the group visited:

• Telford Millennium Community – where Mike Vout from Telford and Wrekin Council and Jon Rowland from Jon Rowland Urban Design led a walking tour and talked about the urban planning, participation, placemaking and  the special Stewardship arrangements as well as touching on the lessons learnt.
• Lawley urban extension in Telford – where Lisa Richards from Telford and Wrekin Council showed the group around and explained the context and background.
• MADE’s offices and central Birmingham – where chief executive David Tittle talked to the Group about regeneration, showed some of the visual methods MADE has used on a recent estate redesign project in London (The Wendling Estate) and led a walking tour of revitalisation / urban renewal schemes in Birmingham city centre.
• Balsall Heath in Birmingham where the Group were introduced to the work of the Neighbourhood Forum and the community of Balsall Heath. Peter Helly, Ashram Community Development Manager, introduced his Micro-Neighbourhood Development project which includes the Planning for Real process and Joe Holyoak, Architect and Urban Planner, talked about the development by the community of the Balsall Heath Neighbourhood Plan.

The study visit concluded with an explanation and demonstration of the Planning for Real process led by Margaret Wilkinson. The Group learnt in detail about the process through a hands-on and participative workshop which gave them the opportunity to “try out” a number of elements of the process for themselves.

Funding for this study tour was from the Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2009-2014 and EEA Financial Mechanism 2009-2014.

We hope that our colleagues from Poland and Iceland enjoyed their visit and we look forward to hearing more about the community involvement projects they are working on.