Building Capacity for Democratic Landscape Transformation

<< Objectives >>Our key objective is to build capacity for democratic landscape transformation among the urban and peri-urban communities of Guimarães, Portugal, the European Green Capital 2026. We plan to achieve this by transferring knowledge and good practices from three European organisations that have actively developed methodical innovation in citizen participation over the past years: LE:NOTRE Institute (NL), Commonspace (GR) and Kulturaktiv (HU) together with the Landscape Laboratory of Guimarães.<< Implementation >>The consortium will conceptualize, design and implement a series of local workshops during the Landscape Forum 2026, to be hosted in April in Guimarães as part of the European Green Capital events. The workshops will include local community members, higher education teachers and learners and relevant stakeholders. The goal is to practically train and implement co-creative approaches to landscape transformation for climate resilience and social cohesion. This includes a train-the-trainer process.<< Results >>The project creates capacity for creating, implementing and evaluating processes of democratic landscape transformation with local communities. The Guimarães Story of Democratic Landscape Transformation will be a detailed record of the entire democratic landscape transformation process in Guimarães, including methods, challenges, and outcomes. This will serve as a case study, showcasing the effectiveness of community-driven transformation and providing insights for others to replicate or adapt.