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It takes a mindshift to put citizens at the center of your work

Have you ever thought about whose role is it to build community? Whose role is it to fix the problems? Is it government, maybe social service programs? Is it groups and associations? Sometimes, I think that communities are looking for a superhero to swoop in and fix all their problems. But this superhero does not exist. What we need is a group of superheroes such as Marvel's Avengers, with each hero bringing their own gift and knowledge, and when its used as a group big changes can happen.

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It's Time to Do Stakeholder Mapping Differently

I’d like to offer another suggestion for improving the way we plan community engagement processes; stakeholder mapping. The classic process used is the 2 x 2 matrix of plotting stakeholders according to their level of interest and their level of influence.

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Living History: A Developmental Evaluation Tool

Developmental Evaluation (DE) can provide vital information to inform the evolution of a program or service by connecting what is done to what is happening with what our program is designed to do and our resources using data, design, and sensemaking. That’s a tall order, but then DE is a particularly powerful approach to supporting innovation and program development. But how do we capture and document all the things that actually go into the life of a program? That’s where the Living History method comes in.

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Guelph's Community Plan Wins IAP2 Canada's Project of the Year

The International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) Canada Core Values Awards help to raise the bar in the field of public engagement through friendly competition to encourage new approaches and innovative uses of existing ones.

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What's Love Got To Do With It?

Tina Turner is well known for delivering the powerful song What’s Love Got to Do With it? That song was rolling around in my head after a recent webinar call with John Kania about the launch of the Collective Change Lab.

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How Safe Is It to Participate?

Something we don’t discuss much is the importance of the ‘do no harm’ principle when engaging the community (especially relevant now with the COVID-19 pandemic). Anthony Boxshall and I identified ‘people feeling unsafe’ as one of the key challenges to co-design. We rely on bringing together a diverse community of interest, but what do you do if alternative views are not welcome, or indeed people fear the consequences of participating and expressing unpopular or inconvenient points of view? This can be even more challenging than just ensuring physical distancing at this time

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