Why Every Community Matters
Naomi Luhde-Thompson (writing for Town and Country Planning Journal)
Rights Community Action is a collective and shared endeavour, involving lawyers, planners, storytellers and artists. It came into being during the Covid pandemic, with our first project, Shorelines, in Hull. We started by asking people, through contacts and community meetings, what they understood about climate change and how they thought it affected them. These are huge, abstract questions, so we began by looking at the practical reality of the impacts people were facing. What were the sea-level rise predictions for Hull? The Environment Agency had published a series of data tables on which there was this sentence: ‘Humber Estuary, 2125, 1.55m’. This figure was effectively meaningless in terms of local people’s personal experiences. It was essential to visualise and imagine that future in a way that did not shut down the conversation but instead tried to infuse it with hope.
We approached the issue in two ways. First, we created wider opportunities for public engagement through the creation and launch of a six-metre-high mural on a wall of Hull College, a central location in the city. This featured a young female artist holding paint brushes and pencils, sitting under seawater that had risen to five metres – the height of the East Coast storm surge of 1953 (see image on page 315). Further murals followed in Hull and in Glasgow during the COP26 climate conference. Second, we created a digital map with the University of Manchester’s Climate Just toolkit² using the Environment Agency data tables and overlaying this on satellite imagery.
This visualised the issue and communicated what it would really mean for people in a way that a table with numbers never could. It also acted as a brilliant starting point for debate, including with local students from Ron Dearing College (online, due to Covid) about the future of their city. We then created an opportunity to make an emotional response through art. This produced an outpouring of highly imaginative and creative artworks exploring the theme of climate change’s impact on place. Some of these were later presented in Parliament to local MP Emma Hardy and other MPs and peers, as part of a call for greater support and funding for climate change adaptation.
We are all planners, we are all artists
For our second project, WeAreHere, we focused on turning the conversation and the inspiration of Shorelines into practical action. Four places in England – the ones most affected by flood risk and characterised by the vulnerability of their communities – were given the opportunity to amplify their voices. Across Taunton, Lowestoft, Skegness and Hull, local artists were employed to act as anchors within their communities, bringing people together through the creation of art. At all gatherings supported by RCA, people are welcomed with food and company and encouraged to build personal connections. To start a conversation about action on climate change in the WeAreHere project, we began with ‘community mapping’, in which a map of the future was created.
The art of community mapping
To create a community map, we cover a large table with paper, provide plenty of coloured pens, and gather everyone around. After deciding which way is north (or south) we mark our current location (often a community centre) in the middle of the paper. Everyone then marks where they have come from in relation to the centre – it’s quickly discovered that distance is quite a flexible concept! After this, people are asked how they got to where they are, and they draw in connecting pathways and roads. We then ask everyone to think about what is important to them in their place in the present, and they draw or mark these things on the map. Everyone has a pen, and people help each other to put things on the map, sharing as they go, discovering new things about the place in which they live. Inevitably, particularly if the group is intergenerational, contributions start to go into the past. We ask people what they used to have and how the place has changed. New (old) things are uncovered and recorded. Finally, we turn to the future and ask, what do you want to happen? What do you want to see? What do you need? By the end, there is a beautiful creative community map that layers past, present and future, and the shared, collaborative beginnings of an agenda for action.
A different perspective on the planning system
The next step is to turn people’s aspirations for their place into policies and choices for places (i.e. site allocations) that could directly translate into a Neighborhood Plan or Local Plan. For example, making the connection between the identification of unused land and an aspiration for the right to grow on it (as a way to increase climate resilience, access to nature and food), creates a real sense of empowerment for people. By demystifying the process (two hours is normally needed for people to get a handle on the rights afforded to them through the planning system) and augmenting this with honest encouragement that everyone’s ideas are valuable and achievable, a new perspective on the planning system emerges. Obviously, what happens next depends on how local authorities subsequently engage with these genuine inputs. Experiences have varied across places. Some local authorities have responded with open doors and encouragement. With others, it has been an uphill struggle to hold the system accountable in both law and policy terms.
A new generation of community-led planners
Our communities haven’t just stopped with planning for themselves – they are becoming community-led planners. In Lowestoft, the UseYourVoice group (named after one of the murals created as part of the WeAreHere project) used their new-found knowledge and confidence to make the case for climate-change action to their local MP, Peter Aldous. This led to him becoming the only Conservative to take a stand against his own government during the passage of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act in Parliament in 2023. Their advocacy on behalf of the community was instrumental in bringing about the only concession on climate and planning in that Act. This was a new ‘responsibility’ to consider climate change on a new powerful policy tool that the government was creating for itself.
New challenges are being faced in terms of people’s rights to be involved in the planning system in England. The denial of a right to be heard as proposed for the government’s new spatial development strategies (SDSs), and the constant refusal to place clear environmental responsibilities on public authorities (including specific outcomes for tackling climate change) demonstrate how ill-served communities are by the planning system, now and in the future. However, as Wales's Future Generations Act³ shows, people can be successfully served by decision making that is based on sustainability. This Act is slowly changing the idea of what public responsibility is in relation to people and place.
To change the world, we need to make sure that power is distributed rather than centralised. A resilient and equitable society – one that encompasses the imagination and creativity of people and places – is still a future aspiration rather than a reality that our communities can enjoy.
Notes
See a suggested set of new community rights, at https://charterfor-democracy.org
See the updated Climate Just mapping tool, at www.climatejust.org.uk/map.html
Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. National Assembly for Wales. www.legislation.gov.uk/anaw/2015/2/contents
This was first published in Town and Country Planning Journal in Sept/Oct 2025 edition - read here
