Online training in Tree Value Visions – a new participatory futures tool

Tree Value Visions is a participatory visioning tool for integrating social values in planning and management of urban treescapes. It is designed to support local decision-making on tree management and planting. It generates evidence and insight about how trees are valued in a locality, focusing on their current and potential social and cultural values. This free online training provides an introduction to the use of the tool. It is suitable for local authority officers, urban green space managers, members of community groups, community councillors, and others with an interest in urban treescapes.

The tool was developed through in-depth research with representative citizen panels in York, Milton Keynes and Cardiff, and subsequently translated into a resource-light version through panels in Camden and Edinburgh. In the workshop, we will present the tool, provide training on how to use it, and illustrate some elements of it. The tool is free to use and will be made publicly available via The Open University’s OpenLearnCreate platform.

The training has limited places, so early registration is advised.

About Tree Value Visions

Tree Value Visions is a participatory visioning tool designed to support local decision-making on tree management and planting. Tree Value Visions generates evidence and insight about how trees are valued in a locality, focusing on their current and potential social and cultural values, in the context of statutory duties and instruments. The social and cultural value focus differentiates this tool from others focused on financial or ecological/biophysical metrics. The process of using the tool supports communication and learning between stakeholders and across sectors, including direct community/citizen involvement. It is grounded in best practice around how to form values through group deliberation and participation and in the environmental values framework adopted by the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

The free-to-use tool addresses the needs of a range of stakeholders and end users. The guidance is written with urban local authority scales, stakeholders and responsibilities in mind, at scales running from authority-wide to ward level areas, or even single greenspaces. The core of the tool is four narratives illustrating different future treescapes, linked to sets of actions and outcomes. The tool also includes a process template how a social valuation can be generated in a single (±3.5 hour long) community stakeholder workshop or citizen panel meeting. Communities are asked to respond to the archetypal ‘visions of the future’ to prompt discussion on how the visions could be translated into local contexts (the local scale is not pre-set and can be adapted by the user) and prioritise social outcomes and policy and management actions across the visions.

The outputs help develop integrated community visions of how to develop and manage urban treescapes in a way that acknowledges and grows the diverse value of trees. The tool takes in biophysical matters of tree management, such as location and care, but also wider considerations such as forms of community involvement, culture, strategic economic development, governance, and health and wellbeing. The process can also incorporate those acting on behalf of nature, e.g. participants acting to represent a voice for trees and wildlife.

Tree Value Visions was funded by UK Research and Innovation as part of the Treescapes programme, and developed through a collaboration between Aberystwyth University, The University of York, Stockholm Environment Institute York, Loughborough University, The Open University and Forest Research, with support from the Local Government Association, The City of Edinburgh, and Camden Borough Council.

For more information, please contact:

Prof Jasper Kenter, Aberystwyth University – jak81@aber.ac.uk

Dr Pete Wood, Aberystwyth University - pew23@aber.ac.uk