Kevin Murray and Dr Husam AlWaer teamed up with RTPI Scotland to devise a special Collaborative Placemaking event for the Scottish Young Planners Network. As a compressed form of the 1,2 and 3 day workshops they run, this half day session was an immersive ‘learning by doing’ experience that involved briefing presentations, a site visit to a live project, and team workshops to develop a framework for the site.

Held at A&DS on 8 October, the event was very well attended by young professionals and students from all over Scotland. The briefing part included an introduction to different levels of masterplanning, the roles of different players in a charrette type process, and the importance of evaluating different potential outcomes.

Each team developed their ideas from different perspectives, drawing upon realistic role play contributions, and then presented their framework ideas. Will Garrett of Edinburgh City Council evaluated the comparative merits of the output propositions.

The feedback from the participants has been very positive, with most looking for this module to be run over a full day, so we will look at that option with the RTPI and different local authorities. Sam Jackson appreciated ‘considering the different roles and voices involved in the masterplanning process’, while Philip Graham enjoyed ‘the group working, and learning how to analyse how different uses worked together’. Angus Dodds noted that it was all ‘run at a brisk pace, which kept the impetus up’.

Architect Feras Ghaloul, who is also involved in KMA training in the Middle East, said that many of these approaches, techniques and skills are transferrable, and looked forward to running similar training events internationally.

Tweets on #sypndesign giving an impression of the evening can be found here.