Rural Europe on the move English_chapt1_6 | Page 55
Learning to listen
Imagining the future
- Action plans
For a local community to really
need local actors to be involved in
local initiatives and projects from the
very beginning, taking account of their
needs and working through different
“Ownership
must be with
the community”
be involved in the sustainable ways to meet them. Ownership must development of its own place requires be with the community, if these former Director of PLANED explains.
building a vision of what they want strategies are to continue. This also “Thematic working groups from the
to see it become in the future. What helps should funding run out. Community Association Forum take
would their ideal community look like?
“Well, the catalyst to start a process
them forward. According to the project
Beginning with such big questions, we is usually a challenge, an opportunity topic, we link them to our networks:
take a step back to turn visions into or an issue to solve in a community,” Community Energy Network, Heritage,
tangible actions. the PLANED staff tell me. “We are here Sustainable Agriculture etc. If they
This is to counter an often used to enhance the process and filling the are interested in joining, they get the
top-down approach to development, gap if the community lacks support for opportunity to share experiences, get
which rarely takes into serious instance”. They do this by gathering to know other people, have access to
consideration the needs or wants community members to draw up an decision-makers and carry the lessons
of communities or regions. This is Action Plan. learnt back to their communities...We
ethically problematic and unlikely
“People suggest how the proposals
keep in contact with people on the
to be a sustainable, long-term that come out from the Action Plan phone, asking if they need support,
development strategy. For that you might progress,” Helen Murray, linking up constantly.”
Leaving with a Welsh
love spoon
Members of the PLANED team
It sounds almost common sense
also talk about the importance but it is still rare to find such rural
of celebrating what has been development projects where
achieved. “We invite communities real participation and community
to a celebration that acknowledges engagement are foregrounded.
them as stimulating and supporting Seeing examples of how this
the dialogue,” she says. So PLANED actually pans out is vital and
accompanies these projects from the we, the participants, continue
initial dreaming exercise right through our Civic Dialogue Journey
to the celebration. Perhaps we can through Europe inspired and
think of it as a kind of support network, curious and armed with a
something which creates the space for Welsh love spoon, a traditional
people to work out what it is they want hand-crafted offering to
for their region and what steps they sweethearts, under our arm as
need to take to actualise that vision. a parting gift.
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