Engagement and Co-production
We have been working with communities for over 50 years, learning from those with lived experiences and understanding what people really want from their neighbourhoods, working together to produce practical visions for the future. We use our skills and experience to empower communities and gain the confidence of local people to find common ground with developers, especially important on controversial projects that may have suffered from false starts.
The essential tools of community engagement are the ability to listen, to explain and to inspire. We exercise these through various methods such as workshops, design charettes, co-design sessions, focus groups or exhibitions; web forums, newsletters and opinion surveys; filmmaking, fun-days and youth projects. Each project, each community is unique and our engagement is always bespoke to that community, seeking to maximise participation and inclusion. People are not ‘hard to reach’ but sometimes they are ‘seldom heard’ and it is our role to hear all voices.
Our engagement strategies and social value strategies are woven together.
We do not shy away from meaningful resident consultation. Our accessible and 'personalised' approach gives support to clients, residents and stakeholders in collaboration and confidence building and together we co-produce projects from concept to detailed design, implementation and occupation.
Why engagement matters
Over and above its central role within the planning process, we have always seen engagement as integral to the design and delivery of our projects. We always encourage clients to commence engagement early, to be transparent and open as this builds and maintains trusts with communities. The process of genuine engagement also has a Social Value – it empowers residents, creates opportunities to learn new skills and provides a pride and sense of belonging in the places they have influenced.
Collaboration is central to the creation of good architecture and well-designed places and PTE has a strong reputation for working with communities as well as fellow designers and consultants to achieve the best results. We have long been at the forefront of best practice consultation and engagement – the process of co-production, when citizens and decision-makers work together to arrive at solutions that work for everyone.
Transparent working with communities from the start – no matter the scale or scope of a project - is fundamental to how we work. We listen, understand and engage, building trust with project stakeholders and communities, maintaining this through to our post occupancy evaluations or revisiting for research projects.
With our bespoke process for each project we create strategies and plans that combine the hands-on and face to face with the interactive digital, working with larger groups or more focussed groups ensuring that all demographics are involved.
Challenges include:
- building trust, maintaining a dialogue and avoiding stakeholder ‘engagement fatigue’
- alerting the public to developments, including seldom heard groups and those without internet access
- sharing complex information about specific project challenges
- formatting information for specific audiences, creating opportunities for further learning or skills development supporting the Social Value commitments
- encouraging and recording feedback and demonstrating that engagement improves outcomes
- understanding any history of consultation, and potential conflicts of interest, an advocacy role for the quieter voices and mediator role for conflicting voices.
Designing an engagement strategy
An engagement strategy should be collaboratively designed and often depends on the brief (including the size and type of project), the nature of the client and the history and prominence of the site and the mapping of the stakeholders and the influence.
PTE is more often involved in designing strategies for local authority projects and small sites where we are sole consultant working on engagement. Where larger developers have PR & planning consultants on hand to design strategies, PTE focuses on advising and providing content. The strategy should be set out in the fee proposal/bid and cover, for example, what is (and is not) included and what else can be provided for additional cost. It must align with the design programme and key milestones to ensure the engagement is timely and can influence the design at appropriate times. It must be agile to adapt to include new voices or issues raised at events and workshops. In all cases the following principles should inform the strategy:
- Listening to gather information
- The sharing ideas and procuring feedback
- Further developing and sharing of ideas.
Bespoke processes
For all but the smallest projects this process is captured in a Statement of Community Involvement (SCI). For a small project, the SCI would be covered within the design and access statement while for a larger project this would part of a specialist consultant’s service: again, this should be identified from the outset. A bespoke process should:
- Map and identify the stakeholders and levels of influence
- Consider the appropriate types of engagement - face to face, workshops, digital or hybrid for instance
- Be programmed to dovetail engagement within overall design programme to feedback and influence outcomes
- Coordinate and support Social Value commitments so together the participation and benefits to the community are maximised.
If you would like to know more about PTE's engagement and co-production expertise, please get in touch with Sarah Eastham, partner - engagement sarah.eastham@ptea.co.uk
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