How do we do it?

Local residents in a Planning for Real event in Blackburn 2001

Many people when investigating community involvement solutions want quick and cheap tools. This approach completely misses the point and can be very dangerous. Many communities (especially in the UK) have become very disillusioned with the idea of community consultation. This is because of bad experiences with practitioners who 'fly in and out' of communities, don't feedback information to communities and often put their own agendas above that of the communities.

Pursuing a community involvement agenda is so much more than a set of tools. It represents a whole new approach to working with people. As a result, what is central to its success is the need to adopt certain behaviour and attitudes. Only once this is understood can people successfully use the tools.

One such tool is Participatory Learning and Action (PLA).  PLA can be described as a group of approaches or methods and behaviours that enable community members to analyse issues affecting them. This helps them to plan what action to take and to monitor and evaluate the results. These approaches have been used throughout the world and now are increasingly being used in the UK. They have developed out of a frustration with top down approaches. With PLA there is a shift away form the position where 'outsiders' (such as local authority officials, voluntary sectors representatives) set the agenda. Instead outsiders go in as facilitators, and learners in the process, leading to local ownership of the outcome. Obviously this requires a change in attitude for many 'professionals'.

Many of us have realised how ineffective methods such as questionnaire surveys and formal meetings can be in trying to involve community members. To help address this problem a  large number of tools have been developed for the PLA practitioner. Tools such as mapping, venn diagramming, matrices and ranking.  The advantage of using such methods is that they can:

However, remember, all such methods are pointless unless they are used by someone who understands the principles of community involvement (i.e. a trained facilitator).

Another method which has been widely used in the UK is 'Planning for Real'. This highly visual approach is copyrighted by the Neighbourhood Initiatives Foundation and was developed in the 1970s. Community members make a big model of their neighbourhood which is then displayed at a central location. Residents are then invited to come and see the model and place pre prepared suggestion cards (of which there are over 250, for example 'start junior football team, trim back shrubs, community cafe) on the model to show what is needed. The cards are then counted up and residents are invited back to draw together an action plan. 

Many more approaches of this type are developing all the time and being used in diverse situations. As practitioners grow in confidence they develop their own methods and approaches (some which work and some which don't! That's part of the fun).