In September, Design South East hosted a workshop on Embedding Community Engagement in the Planning and Design Process as part of its Kent Design programme — bringing together experts in community engagement to gain insights around best practice.
The afternoon of discussions presented a fantastic opportunity to learn more about different ways in which engagement can proactively be embedded within the process and within communities, and to understand how this can shape the legacy of a place.
This three-hour in-person session included presentations from five speakers, each with their own unique set of expertise, to discuss how communities can be meaningfully engaged on different scales of projects, at different times, to create different outcomes which benefit the community.
- Mary Rouse, Community Development Manager at Ebbsfleet Development Corporation spoke about the wide-ranging, place-based community engagement that they are undertaking across the borough, and the ways in which this process has identified gaps. Mary recognised how this engagement led to the creation of vastly enhanced community facilities, which could only have been realised through proactive and consistent engagement within these ever-evolving communities.
- Charlotte Hunter, Associate at Communications Potential spoke about the widespread engagement they undertook for the town centre regeneration in Hounslow, and how both a mix of digital engagement, which enhanced reach and allowed for borough-wide inclusion, and in-person engagement, which provided qualitative data and allowed for meaningful discussions, helped to settle the scheme into the community.
- Clare Bond, Design Advisor at Design South East spoke about Design South East’s work in Medway with the creation of the demographically representative Gillingham Community Panel, and the co-creation workshops that shaped a town centre vision and action plan. This highlighted the importance of an iterative process whereby feedback and reflections are welcomed and subsequently addressed, and everyone’s voices are heard.
- Dieter Kleiner, Director at RCKa spoke about the practice’s commitment to creating buildings that are born from the process of engagement, and which serve a unique purpose within a community. Taking us through a range of projects, Dieter addressed how the brief can be challenged through the engagement process, and the importance of creating a bespoke engagement strategy to maximise impact.
- Frances Wright, Head of Community Partnering at TOWN spoke about the importance of ‘going to the people’ and setting up Citizens’ Assemblies to create a democratic space whereby people have agency, helping build trust in the development process. Frances also highlighted the growing importance of targeting demographics who are often overlooked in the world of development, such as the voices of children, who TOWN is committed to prioritising through their Child-Friendly Design Strategy.
The session, Chaired by Design Advisor Alice Jenkins Carr, was shaped by asking speakers to structure their presentations and case studies around three core questions:
- Brief - How did engagement help to identify the needs and aspirations of the community?
- Process - What value came from the process of engaging with the community?
- Outcome - How has the outcome delivered tangible benefits for the community?
Key takeaways from the session:
- We must build trust through an iterative engagement process — with appropriate feedback mechanisms in place to allow people to reflect and contribute at different points in the process – to ensure that engagement is meaningful and not transactional. A good project comes from a great partnership.
- It is vital to give people agency over decisions which affect them, especially those who often don’t get a voice. Children, in particular, are overlooked in development — with no expectations on developers to engage them, despite under-18s making up over 20% of the UK population. If we want to design for the future, we have to design with them, too.
- Good community engagement allows you to take a step back to the core ideas of a project, whether that be for a local authority, a designer or a developer, and provides a worthwhile mechanism for reflection and evaluation.
- The importance of creating a positive narrative through engagement should not be overlooked. While there is a common rhetoric of engagement being badly received and, in some cases, unhelpful, it is the job of the person curating the engagement process to drive a narrative which is based upon aspirations and change, for the benefit of all. This goes back to the core question of ‘how do we want to live’?
- The importance of recognising people’s time for their contribution to community panels is key. If these panels are to be equitable and fair, we should be finding ways to recognise and reward their contributions.
The presentations and case studies shown at the workshop showcase the best of community engagement — and prove that it is possible to embed engagement within the process in a realistic yet aspirational way to meet local community needs.
At a time of growing digital advancements, it is clear that meaningful, in-person engagement is a powerful approach not just for the duration of the project, but for the legacy of a place – connecting communities so that they feel a real sense of belonging, and enhancing the place stewardship that can come from such processes, when people feel genuinely involved in shaping their future. Through a commitment to these processes, we can create meaningful outcomes for people, places and the planet.
A massive thank you to all o our speakers for their commitment to engaging with communities and their enthusiasm when sharing their insights. Thanks also to all of those who attended for bringing a wealth of constructive questions and furthering the conversation around the importance of community engagement.
