1️⃣How to start?

Don’t know how to take action? You are in the right place.

If you want to take action but you don't know how, this toolkit was designed to help you. It provides a selection of co-creation tools to help you devise/create, organise, and deliver actions that can make a positive change, allowing you to go beyond planning, sensing, and awareness towards concrete action.

Think of this as a collection of helpful areas divided into 6 sections – Initiation, Implementation, Working with creatives, Reflection, and an Action Gallery, which you can explore in any order that suits your needs. You can use it by simply browsing through the different sections that interest you most, kind of like choosing what you need when you need it.

This toolkit sits at the intersection of creativity and community-driven initiatives, showing how collaborating with creatives adds value to your projects by bringing innovative and engaging approaches. It is built on an important set of values of being open, sharing and making sure everyone feels included, helping you feel empowered to make change, working together creatively to go beyond functionality, and aiming to improve our environment through regenerative making and design principles.

We’ve kept things simple and action-oriented. In this Toolkit, you will find:

• A step-by-step process for planning and launching a community-led creative project

• Real examples of how communities have worked with creatives to drive change

• Tools & templates to help you get started right away

• Tips on finding and collaborating with creatives—even if you've never worked with one before

By providing guidance on finding and involving creatives, particularly through connections like the Distributed Design Platform, this resource aims to nurture collaborations that enhance the impact and reach of your community-led actions. Those special tips for working with artists and other creative people will make your actions become more impactful.

Why a toolkit?

This toolkit aims to empower you and your community to move beyond just awareness and planning towards concrete actions that lead to positive environmental change. Keeping this in mind, this toolkit also provides resources which can help to foster relationships between Citizen Observatories and other communities in the local context, especially creatives, artists, local (maker)spaces and the cultural communities in the areas where the Citizen Observatories are based. This is brought about by providing tools and facilitating these connections through the Distributed Design Platform.

What can you get out of this toolkit?

You might be wondering, why this toolkit in the first place? Well, it was created for Citizen Observatories, groups of motivated individuals eager to protect their environment and enact positive change, who may lack the specific guidance and tools to translate their passion into effective action.

By using this toolkit, you gain access to methods and resources that can drive energy and enthusiasm within your group, help you narrow down ideas and define the scope of your action, and map the resources you need and have available. More importantly, it also provides guidance on how to collaborate with creatives, which can significantly amplify the reach and impact of your projects with innovative and engaging approaches.