Bespoke apps as info sources

Hello Lampost Dundee

Hello Lampost Dundee is an initiative led by Sustainable Dundee who are a partnership of organisations from across the city led by the Dundee City Council’s Sustainability and Climate Change Team. This is an innovative engagement platform that makes public spaces interactive. The overall aim is in taking action against climate change but encouraging communities to share their views on the following key subject areas:

‘Greenspaces & Biodiversity

LED Street Lights

Active Travel

Flooding and surface water management

Electric Vehicles & Energy and Retrofittings

Air Pollution & Low Emission Zone

Climate Justice

Living Neighbourhoods & local services

Living Christmas Tree’

Talking signs have been placed across the city. There is a map online to show where these are located. Each ‘Hello’ sign has a QR code which you can scan and answer questions and engage with others in the community on climate change.

Dundee x Hello Lamp Post | Sustainable Dundee

ArcGIS Field Maps

ArcGIS Field Maps – used in Highland Council for Openspace Audits

ArcGIS Field Maps is an app that uses data-driven maps, designed to streamline data collection and mapping. This has been used in Highland Council to obtain and map data across the area for the Play Sufficiency Assessment across 320 sites across the area. The development of this app based data collection tool was a collaborative approach within the Council and was developed within 3-4 weeks and then implemented. It is understood that Highland Council are now considering how this tool can be applied for the area/s Openspace Audit.

Further information on this is available from an Improvement Service Open Space Strategies Workshop in September 2023 (approximately 1 hour into workshop) – https://youtu.be/PBpSR4tAeNw?feature=shared

Community Assembly – to inform the Stratherrick & Foyers Community Action Plan (2021)

The Stratherrick & Foyers Community Action Plan 2021 is essentially a description of a community’s priorities for the next 10 or 20 years, the priorities that it will focus on as a community, and how it will make them come to fruition.

A Community Assembly was undertaken on Zoom with an attendance of 60-70 people. Nick Wright Planning explained however that it was found that delivering effective engagement with this number of participants, virtually, was difficult. Whilst individuals may be experienced in facilitation, undertaking facilitation on a virtual platform, with this scale of attendance, is a different skill. It is much more difficult to present to this number of attendees online as you can’t use human perceptive skills or forge continuous collaborative conversations . However, Nick Wright Planning reported the benefits of virtual engagement are that it starts a conversation, but the risk is that the quality of the conversation isn’t as good as it could be. It was found to be more effective to play to the strengths of the platform which is about presenting rather than discussion.

Nick Wright Planning found smaller workshops on specific themes to be effective, run virtually on Zoom. Running these slightly differently as activities rather than discussion, was found to be helpful. One example of this was in pre-preparing a large whiteboard with sections of presentations and sections for people to fill in. During the conversation, facilitators would move things around to allow participants to see them build up on the screen. This was found to be more effective and more engaging than simply a discussion.

Community Action Plan | Stratherrick & Foyers Community Trust