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Change Stories

@changestories.bsky.social
13 followers 4 following 63 posts

Change Stories is an international research partnership that aims to spark dialogue and learning through storytelling about equitable and sustainable urban development. See more about us and the work we do at changestories.be.uw.edu

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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Azadeh Sobout’s recent piece in Progressive City draws on the work of Take Back the City and Participation and the Practice of Rights to reframe Belfast’s housing crisis as a question of land justice. Read the full piece in Progressive City: progressivecity.net/taking-back-...
progressivecity.net
Taking Back the City: Land Justice, Meitheal, and the Making of Urban Commons in Belfast - Progressive City: Radical Alternatives
By Azadeh Sobout The following piece is part of Progressive City’s “Keeping the ‘Public’ in Public Space” series, which asks authors to address the way public spaces are governed, restricted and/or po...
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
"It doesn’t look like a dramatic and extravagant revolution – it looks like a place where the dignity of the everyday is recognized and supported," comments Isabel Peñaranda the amazing discussion with Friederike Fleischer and María José Álvarez about Care Blocks and the system of care in Bogotá.
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
We have been disseminating our work on the Care Blocks in close collaboration with the Bogotá Women’s Advisory Council, engaging both continuing and newly appointed women leaders following the renewal of delegates for the 2026–2028 term.
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
“This project is not just about streets, design and places for wellbeing, but it is also about the wellbeing of the particular people that are disadvantaged,” says Agustina Martire, Change Stories collaborator and Reader in Architecture at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB).
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
With this amazing group of people, every minute is filled with inspiration and excitement from sharing and discussing new ideas. Surrounded by beautiful flowers and hills of Villa de Leyva, we worked on our cross-comparative papers and "Other Voices" book, a repository of nuanced stories of change.
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
Be part of a global exchange shaping more equitable and sustainable cities — and the stories we tell about them! Learn more about the Change Stories Fellows program at the webinar on Wednesday, October 22nd, at 10-11am PT / 1-2pm ET. Register for the webinar at changestories.be.uw.edu/fellows/
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
Be part of a global exchange shaping more equitable and sustainable cities — and the stories we tell about them! Applications are now open for the Change Stories Fellows program, a learning and knowledge exchange program that includes U.S.-based leaders and changemakers in equity and sustainability.
The image shows text and a photograph of buildings in Belo Horizonte with trees in the foreground. The buildings are colorful and offset against a blue sky. Under the photo are the participating organization logos (University of Washington, Observatory for Urban Health Belo Horizonte, Federal University of Minas Gerais, University of the Andes, Queen's University Belfast, University of Toronto). The text reads: Change Stories Fellows. Urban Change Fellowship in Brazil. This fellowship is a learning and knowledge exchange program for leaders and change-makers working on urban equity and sustainability. The fellowship includes a one-week immersive learning trip to Belo Horizonte, Brazil, one of three global change stories sites. 

To apply: https://changestories.be.uw.edu/ 

Application open: October 10, 2025 

Applications due: November 14, 2025
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
Bogotá’s public care system addresses the needs of unpaid caregivers, mostly women, and prioritizes investments in the city’s most deprived and peripheral neighborhoods.
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Belo Horizonte, Brazil, is a global leader in food sovereignty and security policies. We created an illustrated guide to re-examine the story of how Belo Horizonte developed these policies and programs, celebrate their successes, and expose their unresolved flaws.
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
Cities have dominant stories about their history, identity, and change. These stories circulate via many channels such as the news, official documents, and political speeches. Counter-narratives oftentimes tell a different story about the city and its change, including who has been left out and why.
n illustration of a street in Belfast with typical two-story houses attached to each other with small front gardens. At the end of the street, a wall is seen as a residue from the Troubles. There is a mural painting on the wall with two holding hands with flowers surrounding them. Purple triangle flags are stretched between the houses and flying in the air. There are several people on the street, a man with a child, a woman gardening, a woman walking out of the door, and a woman sitting and raising her hand in a peace sign. In the forefront is a woman representing a guide through the graphic summary, Rachel, waving, smiling, and saying, “Welcome to Belfast!” She is middle-aged, has gray hair with pink highlights, and white skin. She wears a blue hoodie jacket, beige pants, and brown shoes. A drawing of a port with a large boat entering the canal. There are five-story Victorian buildings surrounding the canal on both sides. In front of the buildings are sidewalks with many people walking. The sidewalk on the right side is wider with long wooden-looking shacks. In the bottom left corner of the drawing is Rachel, the graphic summary’s guide, speaking with her hand up and out to the side. There is a speech bubble with the following text: “My father moved to Belfast from the countryside to work in industry.”  A drawing of a large crowd of protesters marching through the street. They are holding a large protest sign saying, “Civil Rights March”, along with many other signs with unreadable text.A drawing of a peace wall. On the left side is a two-story house with four people surrounding the entrance. The peace wall is attached to the house and has three levels related to three different time-points the wall was built – the lowest level of the wall is built from bricks, the second level is built from dense iron poles, and the third level is built from less dense poles. There are mural paintings on the wall with abstract busts of people, a person waving a closer-unspecified flag, and a person with a hat and sunglasses. There are two people in front of the wall and a house behind the wall.
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
Exhibition "The State of Belfast", currently in the Metropolitan Arts Centre, Belfast, is a multi-faceted project drawing connections between art practice and housing rights activism through an extensive public programme of talks, tours, and screenings.
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
Join us for a walking tour of Cathedral Quarter - Belfast where we will be discussing the area’s recent decline and future potential! 14 Aug 2025 Time: 5pm - 6.30pm Free, but Booking Required: themaclive.com/event/saving...
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
Maria Brás Solidarity Kitchen remains a powerful example of how alliances between rural and urban social movements can confront hunger through solidarity.
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Aarathi Prasad, one of the Change Stories’ advisory group members, is involved in the Plastic Waste Innovation Hub, a team of researchers, designers, and engineers exploring issues of plastic waste while recognizing that there are no simple solutions as plastic is intricately embedded in our lives.
Drawings of six people potty training children. 
Image credit: Polina Pencheva, UCL
UCL Plastic Waste Innovation Hub launched 
www.bigtoiletproject.org
 the first global, and most ambitious attempt to understand people’s practices and techniques for toilet training children, to determine what works best for the children, parents, schools and the environment, and why.A photo of garbage waste with a text "Globally, every minute, more than 300,000 disposable nappies are sent to landfill, incinerated, or end up in the environment.".A text "
If you are a parent or adult responsible for toilet training a child, please help University College London’s Big Toilet Project  understand the factors and context that influence successful toilet training and 
advise governments how to reduce the amount of plastic pollution caused by disposable baby diapers." and a logo of the Big Toilet Project.
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
Powerful days with the Women’s Advisory Council in Bogotá 💜 We co-create political advocacy projects through a leadership course built by and for women.
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
“Stories about urban change are often simplified, giving credit to a single mayor or policy, which is not usually the full story,” says Sergio Montero, Change Stories collaborator and Associate Professor at the University of Toronto. @sergemont.bsky.social
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Through Change Stories, we are establishing new types of relationships between academic and community-based partners, centering joy and respect for diverse knowledge in our work. Learn more about the Change Stories project in the full video on changestories.be.uw.edu
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
How does storytelling relate to urban change? And why is important to understand the whole story? Watch the full video on the Change Stories website: changestories.be.uw.edu #Changestories #Storytelling #Storytellingforimpact
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Meitheal is the Irish word for a work team and denotes the co-operative labour system in Ireland where groups of neighbours help each other in turn with farming work, such as harvesting crops. To the heart of the concept is community unity through cooperative work and mutually reciprocal support.
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
In October, we gathered for a powerful Collective Memory event with the Women’s Advisory Council of Bogotá. It underscored the crucial role of women’s voices in shaping the District’s Public Policy on Women and Gender Equality and honored those who have strengthened the Council since 2007.
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
In the centre of Belfast, a group of artists and activists have come together to turn an abandoned space into a community garden. They have set an open fire for people to sit together and explore what it means to feed themselves in the face of the climate crisis.
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Positioning care at the forefront of the public agenda in Bogotá has been a collective effort from various spheres. Women’s movements, policymakers, state bureaucrats, and economists have worked together to ensure that feminism underpins public policy and women fully and equally exercise citizenship
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Vila Pinho's urban community garden in Belo Horizonte is the oldest Production Unit in the city with more than 20 years of existence. It's a great inspiration for contextual urban changes in the field of food security, but is now facing a huge challenge to keep existing and thriving.
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Take Back the City is a coalition of architects, community organizers, and academics that formed to develop sustainable solutions to Belfast’s housing crisis, such as a vision of a high-quality, non-sectarian, zero-carbon development at Mackie's, a large ex-industrial site in West Belfast.
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
"We are all natural storytellers, I think that it's not something we have to learn.” Read more about the power of storytelling and oral tradition as a fount of community knowledge in the inspiring interview with Aarathi Prasad taken by Omar Rincón at cerosetenta.uniandes.edu.co/aarathi-pras...
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Tracing Policy and Activism: Through detailed analysis, we examine the intersection of grassroots activism and institutional policy in Bogotá, focusing on the contributions and struggles of the Women’s Advisory Council #bogotá #consejoconsultivo #politicalparticipation #feministurbanism
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Restaurantes Populares are one of the main initiatives that are part of Belo Horizonte's Food Security Policies. These public facilities have a very important role in addressing food insecurity, especially for the populations in high vulnerability, and can be a huge inspiration for other cities.
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Graphic anthropology is such a fantastic storytelling and creative research tool for capturing and sharing diverse narratives of urban change and interpretations of the city. Change Stories had an opportunity to conduct research in Belfast by the side of Mitch Miller, an inventor of dialectograms.
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Belo Horizonte is one of the three case study cities in the Change Stories Project. The case study of this Brazilian city focuses on the trajectories of food and nutritional security promotion. #changestories #belohorizonte #foodsecurity #publicpolicy #governance #globalsouth
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Our Belfast-based community partners @nooneleftbehind_ppr have launched the community consultation on their plans for 13 hectares of vacant public land that is the area of most acute housing need in the city. You can see the plans, and leave your comments here: takebackthecity.ie
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Our first paper is out! Read about how decolonial and storytelling methods can show the complexities behind stories of urban transformation and about the role of marginalized populations in creating long-term change. wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/9-2...
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Bogotá is one of the places where thousands of narratives about urban change are exposed and celebrated through the multiplicity of publicly available channels – street art, series of free books “Bogotá contada” written by local writers, a symphony of conversations during Ciclovía, and many more.
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Almost a year ago, Change Stories' researchers, community-based organizers, and advisory group members convened for a week in Bogotá, Colombia, to exchange knowledge and co-develop our research approach.
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
What a powerful experience visiting Manzana del Cuidado in Ciudad de Bolívar, Bogotá, offering for free so many amazing services to women and men in the neighborhood and promoting new ways of solidarity and self-esteem that way. #BlocksOfCare #Bogotá #ChangeStories
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
"Bogotá (and Colombia in general) has been a laboratory of experimental policies, disruptions, and attempts at changing that could be useful examples for other places," says a sociologist and Change Stories collaborator, María José Álvarez-Rivadulla.
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
More about Change Stories in Bogotá at changestories.be.uw.edu/cities/bogota/
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
More about Change Stories in Belo Horizonte at changestories.be.uw.edu/cities/belo-...
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
More about Change Stories in Belfast at changestories.be.uw.edu/cities/belfa...
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
Change Stories is an international research partnership that aims to spark dialogue and learning through storytelling about sustainable urban development. More information about the Change Stories project can be found at changestories.be.uw.edu
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Change Stories @changestories.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
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