Academy
Mentoring, training, and support
TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE SUPPORT
Citizen Visioning
At August’s Future Ready Thursday, Involve and Forum for the Future, Technical Assistance Partners for Visioning and Citizen Engagement, hosted a workshop on Citizen Visioning.
Charlie and Dom guided the group through case studies of Our Zero Selby and This Must Be The Place, Nesta, as an example of successful visioning projects. They also shared that a key finding from these projects was to allow citizens to lead the activities themselves for a more effective process, rather than facilitating the process for them.
Participants were then split into groups to convene and collaborate on:
- How might visioning help to inform decision-making or strategy?
- What are the benefits of Citizen Visioning?
- How can visioning processes support the outcome they are trying to achieve?
- What are the key risks?
TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE SUPPORT
Policy groups
The policy groups have now been established and meetings for each group are now underway. You should have received an invite or email from the policy group lead if you have expressed interest in certain groups. If you have not, or would like to join, please email Mollie at Regen.
The groups, group leads, and the first meetings are:
- Community energy – Fraser Stewart The first meeting was held on 30th July, next meeting date TBC
- Local energy and infrastructure – Mollie Atherton The first meeting was held on 3rd September, next meeting date TBC
- Heat networks – Hazel Williams The first meeting is planned for 17th September, next meeting date TBC
- Transport – Alex Robertson The first meeting is planned for 24th September
- Retrofit – Sophie Whinney The next meeting date is TBC
The policy group meetings will be held quarterly, so keep an eye out for invitations to join the next session.
The five policy groups
- Retrofit: Retrofit of existing buildings as a key area for many projects that is lacking effective policy and regulation
- Heat networks: A significant new policy area with insights for local authorities inside and outside the cohort, linking with finance and planning policy agendas.
- Community energy: A significant area for cohort members from the EOI responses and linking with citizen engagement.
- Local energy and infrastructure: RESP and other critical areas such as retail reform and REMA expected over the next year; this is likely to be relevant to all cohort members.
- Transport and mobility: This is likely to be a smaller policy group but there are important policy areas (e.g. charging, bans and LEVI etc.)