The Learning Journeys program seeks to expose delegates from Charlotte, Saint Paul, and West Palm Beach to real-life projects and best practices in the design and management of public spaces in different places, and facilitate collaboration and mutual support among the participating delegations. We will learn from practitioners and experts bringing a variety of perspectives on what it takes to make public places more attractive, safe, and accessible for everyone. Participating delegations will explore successes, challenges, and lessons learned in communities across the country and consider ways to develop and adapt some of these strategies to their own context.

The program is designed to inspire communities to adopt effective and inclusive approaches to public life; enable greater depth on key implementation issues and expose participants to a variety of approaches; and create working relationships within and across delegations that will live on beyond the program.

Timeline

The original program (study tours) was scheduled to run from March to December 2020, but was temporarily postponed in response to the uncertainties generated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Learning Journeys have since been adapted to a virtual format and the start date pushed back to November, 2020. The new timeline is as follows:

Key Goals

The key goals of the program are: 

1. Collaborative problem solving: Combine a diverse range of skills, experiences, and perspectives and engage participants across delegations in conversations and activities around common challenges and goals for their communities.
2. Local coordination and strategy: Facilitate relationship-building and collaboration among participants of each delegation to organize around a specific goal for their community and support the initiative on different fronts. 
3. Establish a network: Create a foundation for long-lasting connections across professional and geographic boundaries to work towards equity and resiliency in our public spaces. The network will introduce a new generation of thought leaders that will create new knowledge and contribute to existing narratives around public spaces.
4. Adaptable strategies: Expose participants to a wide variety of approaches and strategies to design, manage, and support their public spaces centering equity and resiliency. 
5. Implementable ideas: Help participants identify specific projects or initiatives to advance their community’s goals in the public realm, including specific actions, involved parties, and necessary resources.