In a recent post, I shared how we work with residents to develop a strategic approach to supporting participation. We explored how residents want to get involved, what issues we need to improve and how they’d like to work with us. In this post, I focus on their ideas for tackling the challenges.
1. Knowing how to get involved
- Proactive communications and outreach are essential.
- Make the information and the location of activities more accessible
- Improve the Newham Co-create online platform
- Address and mitigate the digital divide
- Value the importance of libraries for awareness-raising
2. Knowing how your contribution was used and decisions made
- Transparency throughout the process is crucial.
- Create multiple ways to find out the outcomes of participation and decisions made
- Enable different levels of input/commitment
- Tackle the assumption that a passive ‘open access’ approach means that seldom-heard groups will be involved
- Follow-up information throughout the participation process and at the end to ‘close the participation loop.’
3. Developing mutual expectations between the council and residents
- Show everyone mutual respect.
- Treat everyone involved with dignity.
- Listen to and engage with issues being discussed
- Be transparent throughout the process
- Create efficient design and messaging
- Be ambitious with participation
- Be clear on the process, requirements, aims, context, and limitations
- Enable resident-led discussion
- Ensure high-quality facilitation
- Accommodate and address people’s broader concerns or interests beyond the issue being discussed
