PFR projects get underway in Poland

Early December saw Margaret Wilkinson, head of the PFR Unit, travel to Poland as part of our Leonardo Planning for Real Project.

Model making at PFR workshop in PolandOur Polish partner, Institute for Territorial Development (IRT), is a subsidiary unit of the Self Government of Lower Silesia which is located in the south – western part of Poland.

In Poland our partners are running two real-life projects in different towns. In the town of Levin Klodzki the project will focus on urban space revitalization, and in Bytom the focus will be on trialling the Planning for Real methodology to look at a specific area of the town.

PFR workshop in PolandIn both towns groups of planning students attended workshops to be trained in the Planning for Real process and they, as local facilitators, will be actively involved in running the real life projects and the programmes of community engagement. Thephotos show the local facilitator workshops which took place in November 2014.

Margaret’s visit to Poland coincided with the early stages of the real-life projects. All day drop-in workshops took place in both towns where local residents and community groups were invited to have their say about their neighbourhoods and put forward their ideas and suggestions for the future. The PFR model proved popular with the communities and we look forward to hearing how these projects progress.

Action planning stage at PFR workshop in PolandAs part of her visit Margaret also gave a presentation about Planning for Real to a group of students from the Department of Architecture of the Cracovian Technical University and spoke at a conference on participatory urban planning which was organised by the Silesian Union of Municipalities and Provinces and TUP Katowice.

This article was posted in News.