Participation and Places
We make participation practical, local, and useful for decisions
We design opportunities for people, communities, institutions, and partners to shape the places they live and work in without turning participation into a heavy process. Through labs, events, citizen science, participatory design, community infrastructure, we turn local knowledge into better projects, stronger decisions, and shared stewardship.
The Challenge
Places in transition need better ways to turn local knowledge into decisions
Participation often happens too late, takes too much effort, and produces outputs that are difficult to use. People are asked to give opinions, but they do not always see how their knowledge influences projects, public assets, funding, services, or delivery.
At the same time, many places have underused spaces, disconnected communities, fragile trust, and external networks that do not yet translate into lasting local value. Local knowledge exists, but it is often informal, fragmented, or invisible to planning, procurement, funding, and project design.
VLK Goal
Our goal is to build participation systems that help communities and institutions make better decisions together.
By 2030, we aim to show that VLK/Aurora has helped communities, public bodies, foundations, schools, cultural organizations, and partners transform participation into visible outputs.
Focus Areas
- 01
Community infrastructure and place regeneration
Underused spaces don't become useful simply because they are opened or renovated. They need governance, programming, care, measurement, and communities able to use them over time. Regenerating a place is not just a matter of having empty spaces available: it is a challenge of management.
Some of the things we do:
- Activation plans for community spaces
- Technological tools and models for governance and management
- Formats for events, labs and workshops
- Partner and stakeholder maps
- Participation and impact dashboards
- Service blueprints for shared spaces
- Documentation and playbooks for future reuse
- 02
Citizen Science & Participatory Research
People know a great deal about their places: mobility, services, buildings, environment, accessibility, care needs, public spaces, local assets, and everyday friction. But this knowledge often remains anecdotal unless it is collected, structured, validated, and made usable.
Some of the things we do:
- Citizen science protocols
- Participatory mapping tools
- Community dashboards
- Workshop and facilitation
- Knowledge management for policy, funding, and project teams
- 03
Participatory Design for Public Assets
Public assets and services often need better briefs before they need bigger promises. Residents may know what is missing, what is broken, what is valued, and what could work, but that knowledge must be translated into formats that administrators, designers, funders, and delivery teams can use.
Some of the things we do:
- Participatory design labs
- Public asset mapping
- Needs and options reports
- Resident journey maps
- Service concepts and prototypes
- Decision-support material for public administrators and partners
- Evidence packs for tenders, funding, or delivery
HOW TO WORK WITH US
Bring us a concrete operational problem from a sector in transition
Work with VLK/Aurora to design and host labs, workshops, field sessions, or events that involve people without making participation heavy or inaccessible.
Turn participation into structured outputs that can support decisions, proposals, tenders, funding, or project design.
Co-design a process where participation is connected from the beginning to a real decision, project, service, or funding path.
