Equity-Centred Community and Stakeholder Engagement
“Equality is giving everyone a pair of shoes. Equity is giving everyone a pair that fits”Unknown Engagement is more than simply informing stakeholders of key organisational decisions. It’s about nurturing relationships, building trust, and cultivating shared visions. Engagement is a complex process …
The personal lessons engagement taught us in 2021
We’ve made it through a most interesting year. A year of engaging with communities, communicating with transparency, and, let’s face it, making our way through a maelstrom of mandates, masks, and maintaining social distancing. We wrapped up the year with our leadership …
The Great Resignation: Employee Engagement in a Post-Pandemic World
The Great Resignation has fast become kitchen table talk. The media talks of job vacancies going unfilled for months and productivity hitting the floor. How can organisations use employee engagement to stop your staff quitting their 9 to 5’s? Whether or not …
Using the Maccas, Woolies and Coles Mindset to Engagement
If we really want to get more people to engage with councils and governments on the important topics, then we need to shake up engagement. Let’s apply a McDonalds or a Woollies / Coles / Aldi approach to public engagement projects and …
Four favourite methods to bring your workshop or focus group to life
When delivering a workshop or focus group it can be a challenge to hear from all voices in the room. One way to encourage everyone to have their say this is to use a few tried and tested methods that are engaging …
How to write a community engagement plan
Writing a community engagement plan can be a daunting task for any project manager or community engagement officer. There’s a lot to consider when planning community engagement. Here’s a list of what to include in your community engagement plan and why it’s …
What is community engagement?
Community engagement is the practice of gaining community input or feedback, or collaborating with communities, to make better decisions or to implement changes. The International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) Australasia defines community engagement as: “an intentional process with the specific purpose …
The toughest of projects
Last week, someone asked me what “tough projects” meant. It varies. It might be engaging on a policy change to address climate change, working on COVID, or working with communities experiencing really difficult community challenges like racism or domestic violence. There are …
Engagement tools: paper vs digital. Which is better?
In recent years digital engagement has really taken off with people experimenting with new technologies that make engagement activities more accessible and sustainable. As leaders in the digital engagement sector, Articulous is often called upon to help clients who want to be …
Why everyday people turn up to community engagement activities
It was a Saturday morning. The first day in a four-month process for members of a citizen engagement process to tackle a very tricky issue. …
Asking the right questions – it’s all in the framing
For some people the tricky part of engagement can be actually making the decision to engage and working out how to go about it. While it’s vital to have a strategy that informs engagement, it’s equally as important not to skip past …
Why live community forums are making a comeback
In the past few months I’ve had the pleasure of attending a number of live community forums in South East Queensland. While attending these forums it struck me how much has changed in community engagement practices in the past ten years. More …
Why an Ethical Approach to Engagement is Critical
Ethics in engagement is vital. We need ethics to keep the process open, honest, inclusive, far-reaching, respectful, fair, collaborative, and informative. Without ethics, people lose faith in the engagement process, they don’t trust it, they feel used, marginalised, unheard and irrelevant. …
Consultation does not necessarily mean that the community gets what it wants.
There have been a few projects in the media of late where community groups have lamented a lack of consultation on projects prior to delivery. Many of these projects have centred on construction and development but a few have involved policy development …
Facing the Music can build Community Trust
I recently had the pleasure of travelling throughout the Surat Basin in south west Queensland with a client of Articulous for a week, facilitating community information sessions. There were a few key lessons that I took away from that week that I …
How to stop the Conversation Block!
Some people thrive on blank slates. Others respond better if they are given context, background and solutions. Either way you need to know your objectives and stimulate the conversation. …
Public Meetings – the good, the bad and the ugly
Public meetings. Ugghhhh. We often try to avoid them, but to be perfectly honest, I’ve also seen them work really well. …
Evaluation – what does it really mean for your communication or engagement project?
Evaluation is a common word in communication and engagement circles, and yet it is often overlooked or hastily considered at the conclusion of a project. …
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