“Place Making 4 Inclusion – reviving active citizenship for reshaping the societies” (PM4I) is one of our current projects. Placemaking, as a concept and practice, focuses on creating and transforming spaces in order to strengthen the connections between people and their surrounding spaces. In the project, we are partnering up with CGE Erfurt (Germany), Urban Foxes (Belgium), AKNOW (Greece), Nabolagshager (Norway), Plaestel (Spain) and Sguardi Urbani (Italy) sharing and learning about each others’ communities and practices of placemaking in local contexts.
As part of the project, multiple outcomes are being created as tools for young placemakers to implement in their communities. These months, three such tools have been developed including a “Cookbook” with creative and innovative placemaking tools, an AR Mobile App allowing users to discover and interact with specific sites through a “past, present and future” lens as well as an E-Platform, which will provide an open space for everyone with an interest in placemaking.
The PM4I CookBook is designed to contribute to the development of the competences in terms of placemaking, to inspire and engage people and society, to provide tips, tricks and pitfalls on the activities and on placemaking with youth, to create connections. The co-creation process of the CookBook did not only involve experts coming from partner organisations, at the same time, it is an ongoing and fully participatory process with our Placemaker Ambassadors, neighbours, children and other stakeholders. Partners and Ambassadors, tried out the new tools for placemaking with them in order to analyse and evaluate the public spaces. Thanks to their hard work, the partners received many efficient feedbacks on our tools already
The PM4I AR game application is designed as an educational tool for Youth Ambassadors and young individuals interested in placemaking. The app shows information about pre-selected areas of local neighbourhoods in the partner countries. The information will be related to the past and present of each place having the form of text, images and live data derived from an Open-Source database. A separate section related to the future of the location constitutes the actual game within the app, where users are allowed to create a photo of their own perception of the place in the future, by clicking and dropping pre-defined stickers.
The E-Platform for Placemaking education tool has a central role in enabling youth and youth workers to engage with placemaking. It collects and stores the acquired information, teaching materials, best practices, and tips of the whole consortium. So that, educators and young people across the globe could learn from these experiences. It initiates perhaps for the first time the mapping of placemaking practices. This is an added value to the project as the resources will be made visible, transparent and accessible.
All of the tools will be tested ongoingly throughout the project’s mobilities and pilot testing phases. More than that, their public launch will come up very soon, so keep posted!
