Caring with people, caring for places: A research on Green Care practices in Finland and its potential for place regeneration

This research analyzes from a fresh conceptual perspective the emerging field of Green Care practices in Finland. Green Care refers to a wide array of activities carried out in wild nature and farming environments, providing with therapeutic, social inclusion, pedagogical and leisure benefits to different target groups.

The empirical work focuses on three communities of Green Care practitioners, operating in Tampere, Sipoo, and Lempäälä, with three main objectives:
(a) to investigate the cross-sectoral collaborations and strategies mobilized to realize the practices, and the values, motivations, visions underlying them;
(b) to understand the role of place-based resources in enabling the practices, and its implications for social inclusion, and human and non-human connection;
(c) to shed light on the potential of a care-based approach to sustainability in triggering societal transformation and place-based sustainability.

Research participants have been engaged via a variety of action-research methodologies, comprising conventional and experimental forms of data collection, the latter kind including photo-voice (with vulnerable groups), video-interviews, arts-based workshops guided by a Theory U-structure, and participatory mapping tools. Additional methods used include: semi-structured interviews, participant observation, surveys.

Highly transdisciplinary in nature, the work draws from and informs several theoretical traditions: care ethics, inner dimension of sustainability, socio-ecological transformations, social entrepreneurship, organizational change, relational place-making.