On the 10 and 11th of December, the city of Mechelen hosted the Speak Up partnership. These two days were filled with lots of discussions, interesting talks, workshops and an boat trip on the river Dijle to experience Mechelen’s ‘Voice of nature’ project. Moreover, we ended the two days with Speak Up’s first participation conference called ‘Lost in Transition? - participation as key for Climate engagement’.
Talking Tables
The idea of a partner meeting like this is to see each other face to face, often resulting in new collaborations between partners. Therefore, we had interesting dialogues during 'Talking Tables' workshops about, among others, how to measure the impact of participation and how to deal with capacity building within your organization. Another topic is how digital tools can be used in participation processes.
Furthermore, Otto Thors gave a workshop on Speak Up's communication strategy. Christophe Busch introduced us to the Hannah Arendt Institute and gave a fascinating talk about polarization.
Finally Mark Van der Veken organized a tour on the river Dijle, where he showed us the project 'Voice of Nature'. This project aims to give non-humans a voice in projects by creating personas around animals and plants, resulting in people being able to speak out for them. A fascinating perspective to use in projects and this boat trip gave us all the insights in the project!
‘Lost in Transition? - participation as key for Climate engagement’
On our second day, Speak Up hosted its first participation conference in Mechelen. The central theme of the day was the relation between participation and climate engagement. We look back on successful day with 70 participants and filled with interesting stories and experiences!
Our keynote speaker Teun Gautier inspired us by sharing many examples of successful citizen-initiatives and by pointing out how much fun it is to work from what is already there, in cities, villages and neighbourhoods.
During Speak Up’s conference in Mechelen, we held a talkshow around ‘‘The relation between participation and the climate transition''. This podcast was hosted by Otto Thors and his guests were keynote speaker Teun Gautier, and Speak Up partners Monika Månsson from Malmö (Sweden), Signe Bak Jørgensen from Skive (Denmark) Mark Van der Veken from Mechelen (Belgium). The latter three all shared their experiences with their own climate pilots. Listen to their stories on Souncloud to gain new inspiration if you are interested in participation and climate engagement!
Monika Mansson talked about the citizen assembly she organized in Malmö. The question she addressed in her workshop was: who gets a voice in climate councils and citizen dialogues? This climate assembly resulted in 26 recommendations for the city, over a very wide range of topics!
Signe Bak Jørgensen discussed the role of public sector professionals in the green transition. She organizes climate villages in Skive where citizens meet and get involved in local initiatives supporting the green transition. It us up to the citizens to decide how they will spend their local climate budget, an interesting combination between participation and climate engagement!
How to give plants and animals a voice? Mark Van der Veken dealt with this question in Mechelen. His solution? Mark incorporated the voice of non-humans in the transformation a the area around the river Dijle by giving them a seat at the table in a citizen panel! This way, people could speak out in the name of certain plants and animals.
These pilots show why it is so important to connect with citizens an communities in order to deal with local or even bigger challenges! Want to know more about one of these pilots? You can find the presentations and video here:
- Video used by Signe (Skive) about the Future Shop: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7242875427470417920/
