On a quintessentially rain-soaked day in Manchester, we held the first Joined-Up Sustainability Transformations ‘JUST In Place’ workshop at the Manchester Art Gallery. Bringing together around 40 people from around 20 different organisations from across Greater Manchester (GM), this workshop aimed to kick-off the work of the JUST Centre in GM.
The workshop brought together key organisations across the city-region to provide insight and expertise on projects and innovations that work well to encourage and achieve sustainability transformations. We invited a variety of people from local governments to grassroots climate action organisations, to try and create a room with a wide range of viewpoints and knowledge to help co-develop the next phase of JUST.
The main aims of the workshop were:
- Building a place-based network of organisations that are working to create a joined-up sustainability transformation in Greater Manchester.
- Capture concerns and needs of organisations.
- Identify key Joined Up Sustainability initiatives.
- Identify how the JUST research centre can support organisations to join and scale up initiatives.
- Gather input for our Rapid Evidence Review of just sustainability transformations in the North of England and Measurement of Readiness Tool for communities to transition to Net Zero.
The day began with a whole room round table of introductions helping people identify opportunities for networking but also create a collegial atmosphere in which attendees felt comfortable to share their views. There was then an introduction to the JUST Centre from deputy director, Professor Mat Paterson followed by a presentation of the Rapid Evidence Review of initiatives in GM. This gave attendees and opportunity to highlight any projects we had missed in this review that could be added after the workshop.
The next session, run by Dr Anne Owen from the University of Leeds, demonstrated the readiness tool and how it might work in practice. This tool will highlight how ready different communities across the North are for the implementation of climate action projects. This session allowed attendees a sneak peek at how the tool will work and an opportunity to provide useful feedback on how this tool could be developed for users moving forward.
The final discussion session of the day allowed participants to work in their tables to identify key initiatives and focus areas that could connect across different sectors for joined-up sustainability transformations. This lively discussion demonstrated the plethora of actions and projects going on across GM that could be grouped to allow for more effective cross sector sustainability action. Attendees then listed organisations they thought would be beneficial to the network and could be contacted to ensure their voices became part of the projects moving forward. The final question for the attendees was to ask how the JUST Centre can best support joined-up sustainability transformations across GM. These ideas were all noted down by a table facilitator and recorded on a Padlet page by a designated scribe to capture all of the ideas and expertise of our attendees.
Once the notes and ideas on Padlet had been reviewed, four key thematic areas were revealed:
- Mobility, health, and active lifestyles
- Education and skills
- Housing, energy, and poverty reduction
- Food, greenspaces, and health
These themes will play a key role in our work moving forward and will create the basis for the projects we engage with over the next few years. Ideas for how the JUST Centre could support organisations in the next steps of the Centre included:
- Helping initiatives become more just in practice.
- Providing longevity and continuity beyond short funding cycles.
- Going to communities directly rather than expecting them to come to centralised spaces.
Since the workshop, the Manchester Place team have reviewed the ideas outlined in the workshop. Reached out to those organisations across GM that were ‘missing’ from the room on the day to see if they would like to participate in future JUST Centre work. These organisations included places like schools, unions, utility companies, and businesses. Moreover, we have allowed people who were interested in participating in the workshop but could not attend on the day to read the Padlet summaries and add any new ideas they might have had for the sessions. We have reached out to the other Place Leads in JUST and hope to compare and contrast our workshop outcomes with them to see if there is scope for collaboration across the regions. Finally, we have set up a GM Place advisory network of engaged participants who would like to have more oversight into the projects we will be working on in the coming months to join-up sustainability transformations.
