As regeneration practitioner I have been extensively involved in designing and running community engagement initiatives, particularly for marginalized and excluded groups, such as black and ethnic minorities, young people, ex-offenders but also older people excluded from community life. At transnational level I designed and led the URBACT II SURE project which placed explicit emphasis on the inclusion of residents. I established the principle that participating municipalities should provide for two representatives of the local action group to participate in exchanges. Where partners embraced the inclusion of their residents in trans-national exchange they found that capacity to progress local action plans was enhanced, not only in terms of comprehension and awareness of the availability of different ways to approach problems, but also in terms of recruitment. Residents are the most effective recruiters to civil society groups involved in integrated regeneration initiatives. The practices explored in the SURE project were successfully applied in Eger, Hungary, where the municipality was able to engage marginalized Roma community in managing a community center, organize clean ups and tree planting as well as developing social enterprises. This principle was further developed in the URBACT funded knowledge transfer project Placemaking 4 Cities which enabled shop owners, residents and parents to actively plan and implement he animation of public spaces.

I have been responsible for a number of integrated regeneration initiatives where jobs, safety, the environment and social welfare formed key themes that requires careful monitoring and evaluation. In terms of transnational networks I have been responsible for supporting municipalities in developing their local actions plans. These reflected local circumstances and progressed at different speeds. Some municipalities focused on securing contributions from external agencies (public, private or arms-length companies and civil society organisations) while others placed more emphasis on bottom-up initiatives with the aim to handing over control as well as responsibility for outcomes to local communities. This required different approaches towards capturing and evaluating progress. Practical examples from my URBACT networks include the self-managed community garden in Dun Laoghaire, Ireland (Placemaking for Cities) or the use of mobile street furniture in an experiment to explore animation options for a central square in Louvain la Neuve, Belgium (SURE). I have extensive programme management experience, including responsibility for substantial budgets and the delivery of demanding targets. I am well aware of the shortcomings associated with a focus on budgetary and quantifiable outputs and try to ensure that qualitative evidence of outcomes, interviews with participants or videos for example, is collected in a transparent and rigorous manner.

I have worked with a range of EU funding programmes and also evaluated some of them, such as URBAN and ERDF from academic perspectives. I am linked to a number of networks that utilize EU funding extensively, for example Urban Europe, Regional Studies Association or the Shrinking Cities Network, and I also receive regular updates via the my university’s European funding team, although here funding opportunities tend to be focused on research, but not exclusively. My experience shows that partners tend to be very alert to EU funding opportunities, however, and I explore with them first what their understanding of the local funding regime is before making my own suggestions. However, the local action plans from the SURE project provided the basis of a number of successful bids for EU funding, including those from Larnaca (Cyprus), Eger (Hungary) and Gheorgheni (Romania)