"Evengagealist". Definition: the evangelist of the community engagement profession. You'll recognise the Evengagealist by their empassioned belief that we should engage the community about everything, all the time, and almost always by empowering the community. You...
So you’ve done your community engagement. The public is happy. They’ve been heard, influenced and perhaps collaborated in or empowered the decision making.
Then what?
Some community engagement programs are easy to predict. They’re relatively routine.
But others suddenly turn from routine to tragedy.
If your engagement entourage outnumbers the public at an event, you have officially sent an entourengage.
We’ve all seen it. There’s 12 of us – engagement specialists, a welcome team, back up comms people, plus specialists from every technical team – and no one comes.
During one of my hostile community engagement projects, a man in his 70s raised his hand to backhand me across the face. Good sense stopped him. But it was terrifying. His hand was shaking, his face was red, and he could no longer contain the rage that was consuming...
