ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the development and implementation of Compassionate Bruges and Compassionate Herzele, the first compassionate cities in Flanders, Belgium. Combining city-wide strategies with neighbourhood-level initiatives, both cities aimed to foster supportive environments around serious illness, caregiving, dying, and loss. Using a co-creative approach with diverse stakeholders, each city developed unique programmes, entailing activities such as compassionate schools in Herzele and the Node City Festival in Bruges. This chapter describes key activities, impacts and facilitators and barriers. The latter including resource limitations, the influence of COVID-19, and strategies for sustaining engagement. It highlights how locally sensitive, participatory processes can promote civic responses to end-of-life experiences and contribute to long-term social change.
