One of the great things about the PROUD project is meeting and working with really interesting and innovative people across Europe. Stephan Vincent fits squarely into this description. He leads the company Region 27 (http://la27eregion.fr) is based in Paris and is focused on working with the 26 regional governments in France (hence the name Region 27).
Stephan’s group are exceptionally interesting, they are interested in the co-design of local policy. Stephan here would want to stress this is not including policy makers in a co-design process but the co-design of policy itself. He would also (passionately) explain that this is not about urban policy of specific physical spaces, think 10 city scale rather than a single space. He would also say cities get too much attention and the regions and specifically the rural components of regions deserve more attention.
Personally the thing that marks Region27 is not just this focus but the fact that they develop new tools for co-design in collaboration with the regional partners they are working with. The latest project they are developing involves the development of innovation labs that are defined and run by local communities, developing tools that are appropriate for that specific context. This meta-design of approaches is just the area that the Lancaster component of the Proud project are specializing in, its fantastic to find a kindred spirit as passionate about mechanisms and processes as we are.
Leon Cruickshank
Gemma Coupe