On October 17th-19th, we joined forces with the GREENGAGE consortium partners at the Austrian Institute of Technology in Vienna. This marked the project’s second in-person meeting since its beginning in January 2023. Up to this point, the multidisciplinary team has been preparing online for the upcoming months, during which we will establish Citizen Observatories in five distinct pilot locations: North Brabant (Netherlands), Turano/Gerace (Italy), Copenhagen (Denmark), and Bristol (UK).
Citizen Observatories are community-based environmental monitoring and information systems. They are used to engage people in data-based co-creation with the aim to innovate processes and outcomes of local policy making to meet the targets of the Green New Deal. The in-person reunion provided a necessary grounding for the grand concepts surrounding citizen science for policy innovation, allowing us to explore the practical opportunities and challenges within real-life scenarios. In our luggage, we carry “The Bristol Approach” as a concrete method for collaboratively devising fresh approaches to enhance the well-being of both people and the planet. Improved places are those that are habitable for humans and other species, not just in the present but also in the future.
In 2016, we co-created The Bristol Approach in partnership with Bristol City Council and Ideas for Change, aiming to unite various stakeholders crucial for driving systemic changes.
A key value of this approach is to involve those individuals who will be impacted by the changes right from the beginning and empower them to co-design solutions alongside those who have the authority to execute them. As Bristol’s Living Lab, we have been testing and improving this co-creation methodology in multiple projects, developed tools and formats to work with it in different situations. Now for the first time, we are adapting this framework to set up GREENGAGE Citizen Observatories. Citizen Observatories can take on many forms and it is hard to define them in a one-size-fits-all kind of way. Their goal is to engage people in data-based co-creation with the aim of informing local policy making. While it might appear clear in theory, the real-life implementation can be intricate and exhilarating.
In Vienna, we started mapping out what GREENGAGE Citizen Observatories could mean for each of the pilots. In Vienna, we initiated the process of outlining the potential implications of GREENGAGE Citizen Observatories for each of the pilot locations. KWMC conducted three workshops with the objective of gaining a comprehensive understanding of the conditions in the pilot areas and their aspirations. This understanding was critical for developing tailored engagement strategies that are inclusive and leave no one behind.
In the upcoming weeks, we will make materials to onboard people who live and work at the pilot’s places. We will apply creative practices to co-design activities with the pilot partners that empower citizens to observe and make sense of their environments.
To keep up to date follow #GREENGAGE on social platforms.
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