Penn State Student ideas for future Granton Coastal Park

We are currently running a series of workshops as part of our Forth2O funded story-telling project, Shifting Baselines, capturing community connection with the Firth of Forth. The project explores how stories, knowledge and collaboration can help contribute to, and drive, more inclusive decision making about the Firth of Forth going forward.

Dan Marriott who is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at Pennsylvania State University attended a meeting in Granton earlier this year to discuss the future Granton Waterfront coastal park.

He mentioned that he had eight Penn State landscape architecture students visiting the UK during their six-week summer course and offered to assist us with developing some design and planning ideas for this area.

The students have interests in ecology, sustainable design, community design, social engagement, heritage, native plants and more. The university is a US ‘Land Grant’ institution which means that they have a commitment to public service as a part of the students’ education.

We recognised that this student visit was a great opportunity for our Shifting Baselines project as it allowed us to bring in different perspectives and ideas from US students as well as local people.

The goal set for the students was to identify a focus area after an introduction to the site, then research, visit and coordinate with individuals and organizations and report back with their thoughts and ideas. They fed back very briefly when with us and will come back with further reflections in early July.

Tim Wilson (local Landscape Architect), Katie Smith (Granton Community Gardeners) and Leonie Alexander supported them during their visit on June 4^th and Rosslyn Barr joined for the afternoon session. David Gluck also joined us for the day. He is a community planner based in York and has done work on community development, developing a youth centre working with teenagers and looking at redevelopment in the York-Leeds area.

We did an introductory session to the Coastal Park, the wider environment and to our Shifting Baselines FORTH20 project at The Pitt and then headed west from the Brick Beach along to Bernie Rocks via the Wild Line wildflower meadows and the information board on multi- functional sea defences.

After lunch at The Pitt the students had another short presentation from Rosslyn on Shifting Baselines and from Tim specifically on marine tree reefs. After questions the students captured their ideas & initial reactions.

Some interesting ideas emerged during their feedback, including the balance between local community and ecotourism, opportunities for education and play, and the need to balance industry, community and biodiversity to ensure all can successfully co-exist.

There are a few little videos below which show some of their initial ideas. We are looking forward to meeting the students again in early July for a feedback session.

Ecological Docks