PDC Places is an initiative that we are trialling for PDC2022 aiming to reduce the conference’s carbon footprint and challenges that hinder access such as costs of flights, registration and accommodation. The initiative also aims to change how knowledge is produced, shared and accessed by the PD community and the local communities that PD researchers and practitioners work with. We saw it as an opportunity to create a space for members of our community to challenge traditional academic ways of sharing knowledge (i.e. listening to presentations and engaging in Q&A) and to embrace the plurality of the PD practices and research being conducted by our global community.
Currently we are working with teams of organisers who are planning to host PDC Places across the globe. Each PDC Place will be running its own distinct agenda and activities. The majority of PDC activities aim to engage with their localities such as the local student community, practitioners and local artisans. Others aim to build their local PD community by bringing together PD academics and students from their region with practitioners and researchers working in other disciplines such as health and community development. While each PDC Place is unique in its motivations and activities that speak to the locality of the initiative, they are not silos. We have PDC Places proposing to collaborate in running their own doctoral consortia, others that will be working with local artisans are discussing a joint online exhibition. Places that were initially proposed as separate PDC Places in the same region are joining their efforts together with an integrated programme. The proposed PDC Places activities are very much grounded in the local communities, cultures and ways of being from which the PD research often published in the conference emerges.
PDC Places will be running activities before, after and/or during the time that delegates will be meeting in Newcastle and online, as a means of maintaining an ongoing dialogue. Additionally, working closely with the conference chairs PDC Places will be anchored to the conference in multiple ways. Organisers will be inviting authors of papers who have been accepted at the conference to present and participate in PDC Place activities. Additionally, within the PDC2022 programme in Newcastle and online we will have dedicated sessions and spaces where PDC Places will share their work in dialogue with delegates.
The last 6 months have been busy and we (Reem & Andy) have been facilitators, negotiators and relay communicators across time zones and between the PDC Places and the conference chairs. However, the real work is being done by PDC Place organisers who have embraced the initiative and fed their creativity into it. It is they who are shaping it and in turn the conference!
Individuals wanting to register for the PDC2022 conference to attend online will also be prompted to register for a PDC Place. We hope that by doing this we will encourage members of our community to engage with their local PDC Place.
To see what the PDC Places have planned you can visit our page. We are hoping to support more PDC Places in other regions, so if you find that there isn’t a PDC Place in your region and are interested in setting one up feel free to email us at placeschairs@pdc2022.org . We are always happy to have a chat!
PDC 202219th August - 1st September 2022