This thing called community engagement

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Community Engagement.  We all keep harping on about it.  A lot of us are supposed to be doing it.  But what exactly is it?

My definition of what I call ‘pure’ community engagement is that it is the process of involving the general public in decision-making that effects them.  For example, a local Council might request feedback from residents about their plans for a new skate park in the local area, or a Government department might set up a committee with members of the public on it to provide advice on reducing road traffic accidents at a particular black-spot.

The people who will be most affected by the decision to be made can often be the real experts on that particular topic!  This is the beauty of community engagement.

Believe it or not, there are right and wrong ways to go about involving the public in decision-making and this is where specialist community engagement practitioners can help!

However, it is important to remember that community engagement is not just about being consulted on something.  Community engagement embraces varying levels of involvement – from simply informing the general public about a decision that has been made, through to the community being empowered to make the final decision themselves.  For more detail, check out the International Association of Public Participation’s Public Participation Spectrum.

I get approached to do various work that gets called ‘community engagement’ and the term is sometimes used more loosely than the above definition.  Sometimes the term community engagement is used to talk more about the community simply taking an interest or becoming more active in a particular community or activity.