Description (EN): The joint policy challenge of the Come in! Transfer Network partner cities (Újbuda–HU, Forli–IT, Gheorgheni–RO, Varazdin-HR, Targówek-PL, Plasencia-ES, Pori-FI)is to mobilise citizens, foster civilian power and urban stewardship through raising awareness towards the values of built heritage to decrease social isolation. This also highlights the brokerage role of municipalities (reating conditions for stakeholders to creatively shape urban environment and public policies).
Read more Achievements (EN): How can one capture the change reached or created thanks to a transfer process. Who is the most affected by these changes? How is it possible to detect outcomes and societal impact linked to a community-based and community-targeted intervention? Actually what is considered an impact at all and how to assess it?
These are the questions - no doubt - every transfer network might have struggled with. Come in! Transfer Network is no exception.
Throughout the more than two years long joint journey various methods and techniques were implemented in Come in! in order to help project partners through this interesting path of realizing and recognising impact. Let’s learn about the shifts and focuses of the Come in! Transfer network in chronological order through the lenses of envisioned and realized impact.
One might say impact assessment starts with a carefully mapped and detailed project planning. A solid framework and a well-defined indicator system are essential to set a realistic goal and achievable perspectives to a project. Identifying the challenges, clarifying priorities by defining the target groups and listing the expectations in regard to mindset, policy, behavioural changes are the baseline of each and every project design.
Therefore we applied a self-developed learning matrix template with guiding questions to help the project partners identify their key expectation, learning goals and envisioned changes on different levels. The first entry of this learning matrix was conducted at the beginning of the project during the network’s kick-off meeting. The representatives and ULG coordinators of the partners (perceived as project team) filled out this detailed matrix answering questions like:
What do you expect to achieve in changing the municipalities’ mindset due to the integrated urban development networks?
What do you expect to gain out of this network on institutional, personal and local level?
What do you expect your ULG will learn out of the transfer process?
What do you expect to achieve in changing the local mindset regarding the topic you address?
The recurring answer to the changes in municipalities’ mindset was to make decision-makers appreciate the grassroots initiatives and to highlight the importance of communication with citizens and their involvement in public-related decision making. Generally speaking, the common aim was to open up the public administration towards its citizens. Respondents jointly underlined the international and intercultural knowledge sharing (methods, techniques, attitudes), just like international visibility as key expectations in regard to their personal and even institutional and local learning gains. Contemporary and participatory approaches in addressing problems, developed cooperation skills, and utilized tools which can be applied in other projects were also strongly mentioned by the project teams. Interesting visions appeared in order to the key assumptions linked to the ULG members like the gained ability to deal with social problems, established and sustainable network of local stakeholders, more self-reflective, prouder citizens as part of the local communities, which might result in public innovation, non-centralized initiative, active public spaces, decreasing isolation, plus viable ideas and developed working culture. All in all, there was a strong need in the project partners to adapt tools that assist them to reactivate locals, build relationships with the citizens, facilitate cross-age co-operations and find change engines who might be encouraged enough to carry on similar projects.
Partners started the transfer process having the key objectives and wishes set and after almost a year, but right before the lockdown, they had the chance to reevaluate their concept of change by filling out the second entry linked to the midterm evaluation. Just ending 2019 three pilot festival (transfer demos) took places in Plasencia, Gheorgheni and Őrmező (Budapest), others were actively planning their pilot activities for the first half of 2020, which plan was highly rewritten by the global pandemic citation. Based on this, some reflections in the learning matrix were informed by field experiences, some were rooted in the preliminary preparation. Nonetheless, detectable changes have started happening in each case. The most significant insight was how the partnering municipalities become aware that organisations, NGO-s are able to realize ambitious activities without the public administration leaning in too much if they share goals despite their different profile. Building, giving and recognising trust appeared recurrently in each reflection. Experiencing that citizens are able to make decisions (and they are allowed to) if so-called decision-makers are supporting but not affecting them might be a revelative notion. Citizens and residents started to feel that their voice matters and it is not so difficult to provide dialogue and cooperate with officers because ideally, the common aim is to solve problems with joint forces. All in all the strengthened trust is tangible in several cases, the sense of belonging started to get reinforced and the re-unions of neighbours is possible, besides it is an important conclusion that cross-institutional practices are inevitable to achieve success.
Impact can be generated and catalyzed on various levels. Project partners as interventionists had a chance to be self-reflective and to cognitively analyse and observe the process they have been involved in by using the learning matrix template. As a closing act - the final entry - we used the Theory of Change (TOC - Nesta 2011) template which is a “practical tool to trigger and support social innovation” to detect changes on perceptual and theoretical levels retrospectively.
Gheorgheni stated in its TOC analyses that the transfer process had a mild success since the initiative flow was interrupted by a political change causing instability and uncertainty. To reach and maintain mindset change (societal impact) a critical mass is required, but with meaningful tasks and goals it is achievable to create proactive independent communities. In the case of Pori, the TOC analyses highlighted a paradigm shift in the city council towards urban planning. This effect might be not exclusively caused by the Come in! Transfer process, but this community-based approach had a role in it. Pori expressed that thanks to the transfer process they welcomed an increased number of visitors (on the developed database website and offline as well) and they learned that explaining is not enough, one needs to demonstrate an action to lift up the community spirit and to reach wider awareness towards the cultural heritage.
According to Targówek, the most important step was to achieve success by carefully identifying stakeholders and to encourage NGO’s to take action in cooperation with the municipality. As a measurable effect, they worked with more than 36 people, realized 2 district-wide activities and they felt they were able to paint this peripheral district attractive through the storytelling activities. Although the perceptual shift is still in progress.
Varaždin realized to step out of the city centre and organise a festival with more than 1200 people being interested. Residents gained knowledge about their own neighbourhood and the film about the Đurek district was broadcasted in the national media. They want to keep up the good work and expand the festival format to other parts of the city as well.
Forlí managed to activate more than 80 people as ULG members and engage 30 people for the long run by co-design methods. They created a user-friendly online database merging architectural facts with storytelling features. They aim to maintain this local network and involve them in other projects.
Plasencia reached approximately 10.000 people by the pilot edition of the festival adaptation and their alternative output the crowd-sourced video contest. The videos are telling stories with a slightly artistic touch and created by locals. This was a successful format to keep up the spirit despite the pandemic.
In the case of Őrmező, the municipality got more open towards the bottom-up initiatives since they organised two pilot festival with the intensive involvement of the local stakeholders. The aim to change the perception of the urban landscape inherited by the socialist era is still in progress, but the first steps were definitely made so the seeds of new approaches became recognizable.
The Theory of Change tool was a fortunate choice to collect soft and hardcore data, measurable and semi-tangible impacts as well on the partner level. The project teams intuitively collected evidence based on interpretation. Some quantifiable data underlines their achievements (communicational indicators, events, outputs) but the long-term envisioned changes are more rooted in self-declarations linked to project frameworks and systemic analyses.
However impact and change can be detected among the members of the target group, more precisely among the ULG members. They have been a crucial part of the process (and somehow the target group of the transfer as well). Based on this double quality it is adequate to assess the change they have experienced as an influencer of the process and as the target group of the process. To gain their interpretation we introduced a narrative tool so-called The Most Significant Change (Rick Davis and Jess Dart, 2005) combined with a visual tool the Photovoice technique (Caroline Wang and Mary Burris, 1997). Since the good practice’s key ingredient is storytelling and participation a suitable choice was to choose a format for assessment that serves this purpose and operated with stories and images to capture the change. These are interpretative qualitative techniques to assess soft outcomes and impact and represents the following notion: “change and impact start with its recognition and self-reflection is essential". Using these participatory action research methods participants maintain control over the data collection and they receive the chance to express their own interpretations. Each partner asked their ULG to share a story which represents the most significant change they individually experienced, linked the project and illustrate it with a photo/image capturing the change they are referring to.
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