Belfast City Council with Urban Scale Interventions

The Belfast Agenda, our city’s first community plan, sets a vision for 2035 that imagines a culturally vibrant city. As part of this ambition, the Council recently launched a draft ten-year cultural strategy, A City Imagining. This draft plan was open for public consultation from 17 April until 12 July 2019. Through innovative public consultation, including the re-use of a vacant shop on the Highstreet of Belfast as a 5-week pop-up, we engaged with over 3000 diverse groups and individuals and helped to shape practical action for cultural-led development for the future of Belfast.

This award is open to a single council or where appropriate a partnership of councils, or a council-owned company. Private sector partners can enter on a council’s behalf, with the permission of the council itself. Many councils are seeking to establish a new relationship with local people and local communities. Community involvement and engagement is increasingly important as a way of shaping council thinking, contributing to service design and improvement and to responding to continuing resource pressures. It may also involve direct community involvement in service delivery. This award is intended to showcase the whole range of community involvement.