RoundView

C7RoundViewReport.pdf (carbonlandscape.org.uk)

The RoundView approach empowered people to think bigger, beyond their patch, about how these activities can contribute to broader sustainability aims. The greatest part of this project has been helping partners and groups to achieve a step change in the landscape through facilitating conversations about our environment. 

“If we pitched our story just around the Industrial Revolution, we miss that opportunity to go right the way back… we didn't want it just to be around how we exploited that geology but also how that geology came about. It's around biodiversity, it's about plants, it's about water, it's about wetlands, it's about this space over a long period of time”.

The significance of this project is less about any one outcome, and more about having a qualitatively different project with a process of learning together through the lens of sustainability.

Achievements:

• 300 attending either RoundView in the Carbon Landscape and Visioning workshops
• 15 trained facilitators
• ‘RoundView of the Carbon Landscape’ film [hyperlink]
• Reports after significant events e.g. Wigan based ‘Deal’ workshop, NNR pilot and the two multi-stakeholder workshops
• 1 ‘database’ of all ideas collected as shared resource

Additional Achievements:

• Cross-cutting contributions to Carbon Clever, Carbon Creative, framing for interpretation boards, deep time dimension of audio trails for the official loops.
• Working with the Youth Summit and young people within the NNR pilot.
• 6 public exhibits of the physical games.
• 3 Peer-reviewed journal articles and other academic influence.

Running workshops with wider stakeholders helped clarify and crystallise a new objective for the Great Manchester Wetlands Partnership. The pride comes from watching people getting excited about the possibilities in their landscape and learning new skills to help move towards them.

“I found the RoundView process genuinely inspiring; it’s very easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless against the planet’s problems but I left feeling optimistic that change is possible for a positive future and I really loved hearing people’s passion and ideas.”

Into the future

An innovation from the Carbon Landscape was designing large-scale, three-dimensional RoundView games that lead participants through self-guided learning, without needing a facilitator. There will be installations throughout the Carbon Landscape, in visitors centres and used in events with partners.

A long-term aim is to create an open learning resource and toolkit that can be used to tell the story of sustainability and interpret a wide range of cultural settings across the UK and internationally. This are being developed in partnership with UNESCO UK Commission.