Trauma Informed Placemaking with Stove Network

So much of the disquiet we see around us in the UK today has a place dimension - not least the recent riots, flag insurgency and marches - and place is also where trauma plays out and is stored.

That’s why introducing trauma-informed placemaking to The Stove Network’s What We Do Now (WWDN) community this morning felt urgent as well as energising.

Together with Dr Anita McKeown, we asked:
– How does trauma live in place?
– How can our creative, cultural and civic practices respond without causing further harm?
– And what does it mean to work with care and accountability as people who shape place?

Thank you to all the practitioners who joined us in the room - your honesty, insight and experience shaped the session as much as the material did.

Trauma-Informed Placemaking isn’t just a methodology. It’s a shift in how we understand the work of place: not neutral, not benign, but deeply relational and always political.