News

New publication: Exploring enabling resources for place-based social entrepreneurship: a participatory study of Green Care practices in Finland by Angela Moriggi

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Angela Moriggi is an external PhD-candidate at the Rural Sociology Group of Wageningen University. From April 1, 2016, until March 31, 2019, she was appointed as Early Stage Researcher at the National Resource Institute of Finland (LUKE) at the research project Nature as pathway of the MSCA ITN programme SUSPLACE. This article is the first … Read more

#SUSPLACE2019: Scholar-Activism Zine from SUSPLACE Final Event 

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Hot off the digital press we present you the SUSPLACE Scholar-Activism Zine! – Created through the collective work of participants in the Scholar-Activism Zine-making workshop at the Final Event in May and then compiled by myself and Poppy Nicol. 

Zine-making is both process and product. The act of coming together to reflect on our roles as scholar-activists and discuss these before turning our ideas onto paper through drawing, writing, doodling and collage was really important. We also hope that the final product, the compiled zine, will help others to reflect on their own practices well as spark up new and interesting conversations around the role of research institutions and researchers in relation to political struggle and communities. 

New publication: ‘The Legend of the Cosmos Mariners’ by Kelli Rose Pearson

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We are proud to annouce the publication the beautiful story ‘The Legend of the Cosmos Mariners’ by SUSPLACE fellow Kelli Rose Pearson! The story has been published in the book ‘Our Entangled Future: Stories to Empower Quantum Social Change’, co-edited by Karen O’Brien, Ann El Khoury, Nicole Schafenacker and Jordan Rosenfeld. Nine short stories, rooted … Read more

SUSPLACE @MSCActions Synthesis Report: What, Why and How of Sustainable place-shaping

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  We are pleased to present our nicely designed Synthesis report of the SUSPLACE MSCActions program. The project formally ended on September 30th, 2019. The Synthesis report, edited by prof. Ina Horlings, provides a summary of the SUSPLACE findings for a wide audience, structured by the What, Why and How of sustainable place-shaping. Furthermore it … Read more

Mastering complexity: SUSPLACE as a joint learning journey

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With the SUSPLACE project coming to an end on September 30th 2019, it’s time to look back and reflect on what we learnt. Not only in terms of scientific insights, but also in terms of our own learning journey as a consortium.
In the past 3 years, consultancy RoyalHaskoningDHV (RHDHV) supported SUSPLACE’s learning journey. Job van den Berg and Jantine Zwinkels, together with the SUSPLACE coordination team, co-created and facilitated the learning journey roadmap and facilitated workshops during joint meetings of the partners. This facilitation supported collaboration, provided direction, and created shared ownership.

Documentary: Sitting on Marão Mountains

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This video-documentary is the result of the project Marão Minha Serra, an action-research project aiming at promoting  more sustainable human-nature relations (see facebook page). The project aimed at re-connecting people to each other and to their forested common land to re-build communities (human and more-than-human). For that, the project recorded residents telling stories about their common land and asked them to choose a meaningful place for their life telling the story behind it. Thus, this video is an affective map of the baldio of Ansiães, a map that tells the past and current resident’s affects towards their common land.

Video: Rebuilding the Commons

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What are commonlands? And how can commoning help to revitalise rural communities? In this video, we follow SUSPLACE researcher Marta Nieto Romero to one of her case studies – a small community in Galicia, Spain that’s seeking new ways to take care of their communal forest lands and, through that, rebuild community life.

Video: Place Ambassadors in Sustainable Tourism

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How can we involve people in more inclusive and participatory place branding initiatives? This is the key question that guided SUSPLACE researcher Cátia Rebelo in her research on sustainable tourism. Learn more about her work in this short video. 

This video is the third in a series of short videos that illustrate inspiring examples of place-shaping practices in Europe. In the past three years, SUSPLACE fellows have been looking at a diversity of cases, trying to understand how citizens, (social) entrepreneurs and community initiatives develop sustainable practices and build the capacities to transform their places according to their ideas, needs and demands. The videos aim to bring these practices, and the research findings, to life.

Publication: Creating Sustainable Places Together. A quick start guide for policy-makers and practitioners to place-based working and co-production

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This guide sets out why place-based participation can help to deliver more sustainable futures and how policy-makers and practitioners across a range of different policy areas can support this through well-designed participative work with communities.

Taking the practical examples from the work of SUSPLACE and the knowledge of its partners , this interactive PDF allows you to read the guide as a normal paper or to navigate ‘web-style’ through the ideas and examples. It introduces the benefits and do’s and don’ts of place-based working and of co-producing outcomes with communities. It guides you through the process of planning place-based working and it offers a menu of different participative methods to suit different aims and needs. All the methods are illustrated with case study examples to bring them to life and all have links to the fuller cases to allow you check their relevance to your own context.

New publication! Place-based transformative learning: a framework to explore consciousness in sustainability initiatives by Siri Pisters et al.

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Siri Pisters is an external PhD-candidate at the Rural Sociology Group of Wageningen University. From April 1, 2016, until March 31, 2019, she was appointed as Early Stage Researcher at the National Resource Institute of Finland (LUKE) at the research project Eco-villages and sustainable living of the MSCA ITN programme SUSPLACE. Abstract Based on a … Read more

#SUSPLACE2019: Rooting to a Place by Reinterpreting Art

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During the SUSPLACE Final Event, I hosted a practice session called ‘Rooting to Place by Reinterpreting Art’. In this blog, I reflect upon the method I used and present the visual outcomes of the workshop. The method, called Mätäsmetäs, was based on a project that took place in 2014 in three recreational forest areas. The main idea of the project was to reinterpret forest themed art in literature in the forest areas. For #SUSPLACE2019, a new adaptation was created: this time the sources were pieces of art and culture related to the history of Tampere.

Documentary: Place Ambassadors – shaping better places to live and visit

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If we asked you to describe the place where you live and how you feel about it, what would you tell others? What is special about your place? We asked the people of the communities of Llangorse and Bwlch in the Brecon Beacons National Park in Wales, what they would tell visitors about their area? Are you curious to know what they have shared with us? Watch the video to find out!

This documentary is the result of an academic intervention that aimed to explore the advantages and disadvantages of introducing and or strengthening civic participation in tourism and branding planning, and part of Place Ambassadors project.