Healthy, active places holds first community of practice

By Kelly-Marie Rodgers - Strategic Lead – Healthy Active Places | 15 February 2023 | TAGS: healthy active places, Kelly-Marie Rodgers

The intersection between health and physical activity is deeply instilled and understood within GM Moving and we can talk to this intersection with purpose and clear intent.

However, we need to better understand how our places and spaces support and enable healthy lives and what we need to do to create conditions for this to be the norm. A sweet spot of health, activity and places.

The first step is to be able to articulate what the healthy, active places principles are and develop our language so we can speak with purpose and intention about the role places and spaces have in our work.

In January, we brought 14 practitioners of place including architects, landscape architects, engineers, and local authority officers together to forge a community of practice that could work to set this intention and purpose.

Coming together allowed us to explore what the healthy, active places principles mean in our lives and places in detail; supporting and challenging each other and bringing fresh perspectives to the table.

We then used a person-centred framework to unpick how we can use the design process to refine the creation of places; from the questions we need to ask to understand what a community needs, to understanding the impact of a built place.

My three main takeaways from the session were:

1. We need to get the basics of our spaces right whilst being ambitious with the future we want to create.

2. We need to improve community engagement, to build ownership and empower local communities.  

3. We need to understand and share what small changes we can make to places and spaces today that can have the biggest impact.

I hope our community of practices will reinvigorate our mission to create places for people, and place our health at the centre of design decisions and processes.

Developing a purposeful language, working with intention, and being able to stand in places and spaces that support healthier and more active lives won't be created overnight.

It is a long-term mission.

If you feel that that a role to play in Greater Manchester’s places and spaces, please get in touch to join our next meeting or set up a workshop.

Downloads

• GM Moving's Healthy Active Places Principles