Place-based learning and community stewardship: A framework for facilitating community engagement

Abstract

Community stewardship involves active participation and responsibility from local residents in collectively caring for and managing their shared environment and its resources. The essential role of community stewardship lies in its capacity to foster sustainable behaviours, empowering communities to make informed decisions, and driving positive, lasting impacts towards a more environmentally conscious future. A key challenge presented in much of the related literature is how to engage citizens in community stewardship initiatives. This article aims to address this challenge by exploring the theoretical and practical aspects of community stewardship, using the Heritage Keepers national initiative in Ireland as a case study. The article navigates the complexities of community stewardship, acknowledging diverse perspectives within communities and the importance of scale in stewardship activities. It explores the intersection of place-based learning and stewardship, emphasising the need for a holistic approach. The article is based on a five-year practitioner-led doctoral project undertaken while the primary author was embedded in a community stewardship initiative in the west of Ireland. Various methodologies are employed that reflect both practitioner and community-based research principles. The methodology and findings presented were guided by the central research question: How can place-based learning enhance community stewardship? Emerging from the empirical research conducted as part of a change-oriented community-university research initiative, this article presents a practical framework to support the process of community stewardship. Specifically, the article identifies five key elements central to the community stewardship process; these include: Care, Knowledge, Facilitation, Agency, and Action. Enhancing and under-pinning each of these is Collective Action. By synthesising these elements, the framework offers valuable insights for researchers and practitioners seeking to implement similar community stewardship initiatives, moving community stewardship beyond a conceptualisation to a series of sequential and operational steps that can be implemented across a variety of contexts.

Keywords

• Community Stewardship
• Place-based learning
• Scale
• Community-university Partnership
• Ireland