This is the 9th session of UAC's Policy Influencers Network Group (PING) and explores how inclusive, community-led visions of the green belt can lead to landscapes that have a reciprocal relationship to the urban, and that feed, delight, connect and sustain us, especially those marginalised or made destitute by the current system. 

Development pressures are mounting on the 13% of England designated as green belt. These areas, which cover more land than urban areas, were originally intended to provide access to nature and a source of health and food for people living in urban centres. This special relationship is all but lost. How can we use this important designation to protect the land around our cities from harmful, monotonous, poor quality, profit-driven or extractive development, whilst meeting our, and nature's, needs for food, homes, livelihoods, belonging, and meaningful connections?

Through 2023, UAC carried out research and development for a creative project Greenbelt 2.0: Rings of Resilience Resistance and Renewal. We brought a group of local people into a new conversation about the Bristol & Bath green belt and captured it using creative technologies. In a beautiful market garden in the Bristol green belt we explored differences in understanding of what the green belt is, tensions around mass housebuilding, how to resource a localised food economy, recovering healthy soils and ecosystems, transport, what 'openness' actually means, and the dire housing affordability crisis. Our conversations and ideas were captured in two short films and an animation in order to articulate and amplify our visions, and test what a more community-led approach might look like.

We'll share these films with you and invite you to share your experiences, expertise and ideas around this question of what an agroecological, multi-functional, fit-for-purpose, open, protected greenbelt might look like and how we can create it. We will explore how a community-led framework for Greenbelt development, led by meaningful dialogue and connections to our lived experience, values and senses, might provide a new chapter for our Greenbelts and the urban communities they surround.

If you'd like to present at this session or have any questions, please get in touch. maddy@greenfuture.org.uk

**If you booked for this event before the date change, don't worry, you will still receive the zoom link and don't have to rebook.