Partner Meeting in Pori - updates, inspiration and collective efforts

Summary

The aim was not only to gain some insights in Pori’s style of city development, but also to update each other on the progress that the different teams made since the project kicked-off. On top of that, we used the chance to collectively work on open tasks in the different project pillars, such as the Public Interest Design (PID) Training Programme, the Liveability Charta, the Use Case Guide and with regard to the Evaluation.

Getting inspired from Pori`s best practice examples

The meeting was also a wonderful opportunity to get to know – and to get inspired by – some of the very liveable aspects of life in Pori, such as the beautiful Yytari beach, sustainably managed and very well preserved, the public park Kirvatsi, home of many cultural events and designed around the message of love. The City Living Room, a spacious, comfy and non-commercial place in the middle of Pori’s shopping center Puuvilla, there to offer what people need: a space to get together, enjoy art, read, swap clothes or just talk to one another. Another inspiring example of how existing public spaces can be transformed in places for the common good is Asema44, an old bus station in Pori that was transformed into a cultural venue.

While visiting all these places we also learnt about some of the techniques Pori’s city agents use: they for example measure the success of cultural activities as a strategy of revitalizing the city center by counting the active bluetooth devices on the square. Another interesting insight was how to convince shop owners to provide space for non-profit activities by showing them the benefits of such spaces: the shopping center gained a number of 20.000 extra visitors each year since the City Living Room was created.

Getting things done

We used our meeting in Pori to get a lot of work done: we focussed on the piloting process of the Liveability Charter, worked on the use case guide, that will help future change agents to realise their projects working with public interest design. We tested first apects that will be part of the PID training programme. We worked on the project management as well as our communication strategies and the different forms of project evaluation.

On top of that we gained first insights in the pilot projects of each participating city.

We are very curious to learn about the transformative power of public interest design methods and see the actual results in the course of the Liveability Project – stay tuned!

Highlights

Time to bond and to build a wonderful working atmosphere with the team, get inspired from best practice examples in Pori, dive into work together & last but not least: the incredible surprise to see polar lights in the middle of September, giving us a bright example of what nature can contribute to a liveable life.

Programme Manual Online

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