Well-planned engagement will be crucial in helping the cities to reach the best possible outcome, and in DivAirCity we are obliged happily to reach not just citizens, but a diverse and inclusive group of stakeholders, which will bring a breadth and depth of knowledge, skills and resources which are unlikely to be found through traditional ‘expert’ groups.
The 6+1 protected categories, who are the chosen and crucial target groups of the project have been named and defined by the UN: People with different abilities, the young/children, women, the elderly, people with other ethnicities/other cultural backgrounds, transgender and non-binary people, gay, lesbian and queer people.
Many questions are immediately rising to all partners involved: As exemplified by the Potsdam research:
“How do we decide on the deciding voices within the diverse groups?”
There will not be one definition or description, for all cities on who to involve, and it is by completely by design.
- It is up to each city to decide on the diversity within the diversity, and bring to the table the deciding voices.
- It is up to each city team to shape the budding community of their engagement, taking into account the local organisations representing the minorities/ citizens we aim to reach.
There will betraining activities aiding this particular process, and there are existing frameworks selected, with helpful tools. (Read more in: Language Awareness Course and research by in Africa.)
The DivAirCity Language awareness course
Introduction by Equilibrium
The language course has been created and conducted by Equilibrium, in collaboration with InAfrica, Energiada, Bipolaire, AAK and Univercities.
The language course will be conducted several times over the first year of the project. It is particularly important that the course is attended by all project partners, as we need to acknowledge that many of us are among the majority in society and biased in our ways of viewing the world.
The course serves multiple purposes:
- Improved attention to the sensitivity of being a minority.
- Building a vocabulary to be more specific, attentive and including through dialog with other partners and an exchange of perspectives.
- …
Research and recommendations by InAfrica
In M3 partners InAfrica demonstrated how simple desktop research can create a solid basis for the involvement, previous the actor mapping.
Their research basis for the five cities, can be viewed here.
- Who are the main gatekeepers to accessing certain groups e.g. community leaders, civic leaders (these are also important to know)?
- Think about: Are we/ should we be prioritising the 6+1 characteristics? Some will be easier to identify and are likely to live in certain settings e.g. ethnic groups, certain age groups, some are not.
- Who (individually) is vulnerable to air pollution and which communities are vulnerable to air pollution? Which neighbourhoods and transit areas in the cities suffer from air pollution and does this correlate with a relatively high proportion of the 6+1 groups.
- Where do we find cultural, outdoor pass-times, and how does air pollution effect them? Religious centers, mosques and ethnic churches are important to study, and also out-door community centers and study circles.
- Identify risks and barriers to reaching the target groups –e.g. language, lack of incentives.
- What are the key-access areas for each target group – e.g. certain supermarkets, ethnic restaurants, education centers, play areas, chess, boule/ petang or out-door pools?
- Equality impact assessments should be created for each co-creation activity. When defining who our target groups should be more specifically (see more under assessment)
Actor Mapping
The Actor mapping is a scheduled T3.2 activity, and was launched for the cities and their co-creators in M4 of the project, december 2021. It started out as an online exercise in a joined workshop, and followed up upon in a series of meetings with AAK and CCC.
The learnings gathered from the actor mapping and the initial meetings with local actors, citizens’ representatives in particular, have been gathered and analysed into principles for co-creation for each city.
Principles for the co-creation
( input from ccc)
Aarhus’s initial thoughts
- Awareness and a sensitive language for diversity are key-values for DivAirCity.
- We need to make it as easy as possible for citizens to join, e.g. text message is for everyone.
- “We should have big ears and small mouths. ” – The board of inclusion and equality
- Is it the unheard voices or citizen who for health reasons need to be protected (from bad air quality) and thus also heard?
- How do we decide on the deciding voices?
Potsdam’s Initial thoughts
- We want to engage the un-heard demographics, in a way that is not stigmatizing.
- How can we communicate about this without categorizing and stigmatizing?
- How do we deal with the diversity within the diverse groups?
- How do we engage the unheard voices?
Road Maps and Scenarios
T3.2 will be concluded in M8 of the project, by producing envisioned roadmaps and scenarios for the co-creation of the cities. As with the actor mapping, the roadmaps and scenarios can be repeated and elaborated upon and will not be static documents.
