Destination New Netherlands Strategy How did the idea of ‘Reminiscing about neighbourhood greenery’ evolve? It was the final product of a very long process. InnovationNetwork wanted to find a new angle for tackling the problems that often arise in deprived areas: a lack of mutual understanding, an increasing feeling of ‘them and us’ and volatile relations between different groups within the community. The Network wondered whether public green spaces could open up opportunities for people to become more involved in their neighbourhood, and enhance mutual trust and understanding. The exploratory project started by InnovationNetwork (known as Bestemming Nieuw Nederland [Destination New Netherlands]) reversed the question: how can we use the diversity of backgrounds among members of the old and new Dutch population to create more flourishing public green areas? An important lesson emerged: public green spaces will only encourage integration and unity if all the local residents see the open area as their own. So how can this be accomplished? InnovationNetwork acted as the linchpin by meeting up with new people, pinpointing links between various methods and projects, speaking to parties who have very different views of the world around us and by finding the right place to carry out a pilot project. In doing this, the Network succeeded in laying the foundations for the Garden of Remembrance. The concept of encouraging groups of people to reminisce about the past has been tried and tested in deprived areas before. Memories are used to improve social cohesion between local residents. But this is the first time that reminiscing has been used to form the foundations for a design process. In Dordrecht, four parties were found to get the process going: the Dordrecht municipal authorities, Woonbron housing association, Buitenruimte voor Contact and InnovationNetwork. The parties started work on the pilot for the Garden of Remembrance in January 2009. So how do you go about it? A lot of thought went into this. Buitenruimte voor Contact (an enterprise dedicated to creating public green areas for the benefit of local residents) uses local participation to find innovative ways of designing community gardens. The organization soon recognized the advantages of the reminiscence method. Using this strategy, Buitenruimte voor Contact embarked on a complex process comprising several links and layers. The ‘Reminiscing about neighbourhood greenery’ method was applied during the design phase of the process. Local participation and conjuring up childhood memories in small, homogenous groups became a vital ingredient of this phase. As the Garden of Remembrance was a pilot, a lot of work went into finding a sound basis for the process. A number of contacts pointed towards the Pluspunt agency from Rotterdam. This expertise centre for senior citizens and participation has many years of experience of the reminiscence method. The agency provided training courses for the group supervisors responsible for helping the residents to rekindle their childhood memories. Woonactief, a mediation and research bureau for housing and spatial planning issues, also played an important role. Happy hoeing But if the garden is to be used, it also needs to be maintained and managed. This is something the Wielwijk residents do together. And this is exactly what the project hoped to achieve: the entire community feeling responsible for the garden, because it is theirs. The residents are given help and advice by professionals. So when will we be able to say that the Garden of Remembrance is a success? When the local Wielwijk population use the garden as if it were their own. A place in which they feel at home. But what happens to the sense of unity when people leave the area and new people move in? Will they feel as involved in the garden? We don’t know the answer to this question. We shall have to wait and see. 42 Pagina 48
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