Trustmaking
Connect, create, build – Youth work for placemaking!
The Oslo Trustmaking ULL ( Urban Living Lab - EU Driving Urban Transition) Project was a collaboration between Natural State, Bykuben, and Herslebs VGS (H20) which aimed to build more trustful relationships between youth and the Bykuben municipal department through participation in placemaking activities in the Herslebs schoolyard.
While youth participation is valued by the municipality of Oslo, youth often complain that their suggestions are not implemented or they are not given any input on how their suggestions are fed into the decision-making process.
In the Oslo Trustmaking ULL we aimed to fill this gap by approaching trust-building from a placemaking perspective due to the inherently participatory nature of placemaking practice, in combination with the key aspect of ‘making’ in community involvement in placemaking, that sets placemaking apart from other participatory practices.
Co-designing and then co-construction demonstrates to youth that their ideas are valued, and builds trust when they see that their ideas have been turned into a physical reality:
“I liked that we got to decide for ourselves what we wanted to do. That we participated in the entire process and how long it takes to make different things and how to plan”.
youth from the core Trustmaking team in Oslo
Want to learn more about the process and key insights from our trustmaking journey? A guidebook on Trustmaking is coming out from nai010 publishers in the Spring of 2025!
