Community Mapping Event 

See the brilliant video from Circus Artspace here, and read the article on it from Inverness Courier here!

We received a small grant from the North Highlands and Islands Climate Hub to organise a community engagement event in our area in March 2022. Hub staff were really helpful too, providing advice and support both to plan the event and on the day (thank you Bethany!) 

We used the funding to organise a creative mapping day, with involvement from lots of local groups promoting a range of climate actions. The event was arranged on a drop-in basis over a few hours so it is hard to give an exact number of attendees but we estimate that around 100 people took part over the course of the day. We used the mapping activity to engage with people about the positive aspects of our neighbourhood and also the aspects that could be improved. We knew from earlier survey activity that issues around communal green spaces, active travel and safer streets were all key issues and the event helped us to get more thoughts and feedback about how we could address some of those issues. We invited a range of other local groups to attend the event so we were also able to provide information about e-bikes, growing food, tool sharing and health walks. The event attracted a lot of press interest, engagement with the local primary school and attendance by local councillors and our MP so hopefully the climate action messages of the day will have had a wider impact beyond the actual event.  

The success of the event and the interest expressed by local residents has encouraged us to investigate what we can do to improve our area in terms of safer streets and active travel and we will be aiming to take this forward in the coming year. We are currently investigating creating a pilot “parklet” (replacing a parking space with an area of seating and planting); an e-bike scheme for parents at the primary school; and hoping to work with the council to create a process for communities to simply and cheaply organise street closure events, delivering a pilot event in our area.