Posts Tagged ‘Community Engagement’
Some reflections on, and tips about, deliberative engagement processes
There’s a growing community of practitioners out there talking, thinking and experimenting with deliberative engagement processes. I happen to be one of them, and I’ve just facilitated my 80th deliberative process. My first was back in 1998, which I presented on at an IAP2 Conference in Banff the following year, sharing a session with the…
Read MoreIt’s always a Leap of Faith: Reflections on a ‘successful’ deliberative process that never delivered
Max Hardy (Max Hardy Consulting) and Anna Kelderman (Shape Urban) Designing and facilitating deliberative engagement processes have been among our most satisfying professional experiences, though they don’t always come to plan. Several years ago, we teamed up to work on a very challenging project to create a new planning strategy that identifies increased infill development…
Read MoreGet Unstuck in Your Engagement Career – New Mentoring Opportunities Available.
I’ve built a career on knowing how to deal with complex problems and helping organisations get unstuck, skills that can also be incredibly valuable for helping you develop a career that works for you and your needs. Community engagement is no easy job and mid-career engagement practitioners can come up against a variety of challenges…
Read MoreScoping under the microscope
I’ve been wanting to blog about how we can better scope and define projects for quite some time, especially for authentic co-design. Now we have a tool to move beyond the binary negotiable/non-negotiable approach in project development I couldn’t resist any longer. We all know it’s handy when engaging the community, to differentiate between project…
Read MoreEngaging to make a difference. A conversation with Ben Neil.
I had the pleasure of meeting and talking with a wonderful community engagement practitioner, Ben Neil. He has so many stories from his wealth of experience. Here is some of what we spoke about. Max: Ben, give us a really brief description of your role at Capire and professional background? Ben: I have been at…
Read MoreHow safe is it to participate?
Something we don’t discuss much is the importance of the ‘do no harm’ principle when engaging the community (especially relevant now with the Covid-19 pandemic). Anthony Boxshall and I identified ‘people feeling unsafe’ as one of the key challenges to co-design. We rely on bringing together a diverse community of interest, but what do you…
Read MoreDebunking myths about ‘deliberation’
There is much being said and written about deliberation. This is not surprising, especially in Victoria, Australia, where the new Local Government Act stipulates this is the way to now engage communities. So, I thought I’d make a contribution as a practitioner who has promoted, designed and facilitated deliberative processes for over 20 years. In…
Read MoreLearning from Covid-19. How what we are learning now can transform how we engage into the future!
Engaging communities at a time of physical distancing presents some real challenges for local government.
Let’s face it, community engagement is never perfect. It is never perfectly representative; the processes are not perfectly supported by organisations, nor is the output perfectly considered. It is always a matter of making trade-offs with our processes, limited by budget, time-frames, and the capacity of communities to be involved. But we have come a long way in the last 20 years. Here are some things that I’ve noticed are much better.
Community engagement – definitions applicable to systems change
The importance of defining the term community engagement before designing a community engagement process.
Read MoreChannelling Fran Peavey – generating strategic questions for those who sponsor community engagement and collaboration
As many of you will know I have long been a fan of Fran Peavey; especially her work in developing the concept and practice of strategic questioning. Fran put forward the power of questions that make it impossible for the status quo to remain. Questions that create movement; questions that cannot be answered immediately, without…
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