Envisioning the future village

This project was co-directed by Nick Gant (UOB), Zoe Ganderton of Action in Rural Sussex and in association with the East Sussex County Records Office and was funded by the Gulbenkian Foundation. Future Village tested a process of inter-generational community participation in sustainable development and neighbourhood planning, through a methodology that required old and young community members to ‘look back’ 50 years at their community and look ahead 50 years. Gant (with Ganderton) engaged community members in a process of using online tools, phone apps and software tools to help community members collaboratively create recognisable and identifiable ‘visions’ of their future 2061. The process enabled ‘hard to reach’ members of the community to apply their local knowledge of social, economic and environmental issues and opportunities in the neighbourhood to develop ‘meaningful’ and communally authenticated proposals for future development. The project process was published on the Community21 platform and helped form new policy for community planning across the network of community engagement practices and regional design statements. The project and findings were presented at the International Conference ‘Making the Invisible Visible’ (2011), at the Rural Commission (2011), The Sussex Neighbourhood Planning Symposium and The UK and Ireland Neighbourhood Planning Conference (2012). It resulted in an AHRC funded doctorial application (in application) to develop this work and further evolve design methodologies and influence planning policy provide and process whilst providing a new toolkit for forming community enabled design statements and neighbourhood plans.