Putting people at the centre of place
Placemaking Aotearoa is a constellation of professionals who care about people in place.
We are New Zealand's community of placemakers, organised as a constellation: independent regional and topic-based groups across the country, each shaping their own mahi, held together by a shared kaupapa.
The people in it are designers, councils, community groups, and locals who've turned "someone should do something about this space" into an actual project. You might also hear this work called community-led design, public space activation, or shaping neighbourhoods together - it's all the same idea.
As a platform, this is where placemakers meet and build relationships, exchange tools and knowledge, get support for the mahi they're doing, and add their voice to advocating for community-led approaches.
Connect - bring people involved in placemaking across Aotearoa together, so they can meet, collaborate and build relationships.
Share - exchange knowledge, practical tools, resources and experiences, so people can learn from each other.
Support - help people doing placemaking mahi with guidance, connections, resources and encouragement.
Advocate - promote community-led approaches, and push for systems, policies and practices that better support communities.
What it is and why?
Placemaking is a way of working that changes people and places together. It is what happens when the people who use a space help shape it - a park, a street, a laneway, a corner that's been empty too long. That is why it is:
Inclusive and participatory - built on local knowledge and lived experience, alongside expertise.
Learning by doing - people working together in place to make things better, now and into the future.
Connective - helps people express aroha for their places, and in turn, for each other.
Grounded in purpose - forges strong kaupapa that holds a community together.
Strengthening - uplifts the mana and mauri of communities: environmentally, culturally, socially, economically.
Shared - when places and people thrive together, the whole neighbourhood benefits.
