Practical Tools for Community Engagement

One of the most popular workshops on the Empowering Good Practice programme, was our Practical Tools for Community Engagement course, attended by over 100 people during the life of the project. People seemed to like the range and simplicity of the tools presented. “Very logical, very simple .: very effective” - in the words of one participant

All the tools we use and teach have grown out of a long tradition of participatory working that has its origins in overseas development work, and which continues to develop today. For more about the background see Have you been PA'd? or this exploration of community mapping by the Pathways through Participation project. We've often marvelled at the range of participation tools out there, and how some almost seem to be competing with each other – but in reality the ones that work best seem to share some common characteristics.

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What are you doing to support community empowerment?

Empowerment Works supporters are an army of active and committed people who understand the value of community empowerment and regularly take small and big steps to promote and make the case for community empowerment in their areas. 

For some people it can be isolating working on your own on empowerment, so we’re using this website to inspire each other and share info on what we are doing.

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People Powered Change

Jumping through hoops is how lottery applicants often describe their experience.  I wonder if David Robinson of Community Links had this in mind when in his motivational talk to conclude the Big Lottery Fund’s People Powered Change event at the Lowry Centre in Manchester on Friday he described how dolphins learn to jump through hoops held high in the air by going through them in the water to reach their food, then find them raised inch by inch.

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Now it's down to us to Keep Empowerment Working...

It's now a month since eighty of us packed into a buzzing conference room at Keeping Empowerment Working to think about how we measure and communicate the impact of the work that we do. The memory that has stayed with me was the strong sense of shared values that ran through the day, and the motivation that seemed to generate. I'm still delighted we chose the community-owned Southville Centre, as it's such a great example of what people can do when they work together. Thanks go to the speakers and workshop presenters who inspired and challenged us. The key points that resonated for me are:

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Research that pays off

Young mothers, people with current or recent experience of using local drug treatment services, community champions from Upper Horfield in Bristol, survivors of domestic abuse, and community activists from Torbay don’t sound like people who’d want to celebrate together.  But they and more found much to share at a networking day yesterday organised by South West Foundation to bring together groups which had all completed Community Researcher training.

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Your Local Budget on the road

The Big Society Network and NESTA were in Bristol on Friday for the second Your Local Budget (YLB) learning event on engaging people in local budgets and participatory budgeting (PB). It was good to find six other members of Empowering Communities' eighteen month old PB group also at Colston Hall, and some luminaries from the national scene, including Phil Teece of the Participatory Budgeting Unit and Simon Burall from Involve, down in Bristol again after speaking at our Keeping Empowerment Working event on 10^th February.

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Community Led Planning and the Localism Bill – how full is the glass?

Planners, community representatives and people from the private sector – all experts in different ways – gathered in Tiverton on Thursday 17 February for an over-subscribed day organised by Empowering Communities with Creating Excellence, SWAN and Devon Heartlands Community Trust to consider the prospects for rural and urban communities in the new planning environment being created by the Localism Bill. 

Chair Jim Claydon, a Board member of Creating Excellence and Past-President of RTPI, set the scene with a welcome for the Localism Bill and the opportunities it will offer.  He had questions, however, on whether the reality will live up to many of the good principles behind it, and his mixture of welcome and concern was echoed by the speakers.  Their presentations and other material is on the Creating Excellence website at this link, and more will be added.  So this is just a discussion-starting sip of what they had to say:

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