Engage. Are Your Community Leaders Taking This Action?
Increasingly, art installations and arts-focused events are becoming an important means to engaging community.
The county where my Extension office is located has updated its comprehensive, strategic action plan for the future.
As one of the local county agents, I was pressed into service to assist with the public engagement portions of the creation of this new plan, to add to the capacity of the county planning department's staff and the independent consulting firm that was hired to guide and create the plan. This county plan, officially adopted by county leaders, is a document that is meant to guide decisions, policies, codes, and public investments for the next 10-15 years.
As has been learned over time, engaging the people affected by these actions is important. And it's not just county planning processes that can benefit from "engagement." Many believe that engagement holds the potential for solving or resolving many vexing community challenges. The evidence is strong.
So strong, in fact, that Penn State's Center for Economic and Community Development have invested a substantial amount of time and resources into creating an Engagement Toolbox, complete with a guide to planning engagement. Check these resources out and study the depth of complexity and possibility that has been uncovered.
Of course, much of this knowledge, and the acknowledgment of its merit, is not anything new. As long ago as the late 1980s, the management theories of that time came to similar conclusions about the merit of flattening the pyramid and empowering more people to take individual action in any endeavor.
Looking at anecdotal observation and experience since that time, many have found engagement and then subsequent individual empowerment to be invaluable. Whether in community planning, park and recreation development, active transportation planning, main street revitalization, or county-level planning, engaging those you are planning for is a whole lot easier and more productive when plan developers plan with community members rather than for them. In the end, after the plan is complete (and is a plan ever really complete?), it is the community itself and its citizens that will have to actually implement the plan with their own individual assets and leveraged, collective investments.
Or not.
Have you heard of community plans or other action plans that sit on a shelf gathering dust? That outcome is a whole lot less likely when those who have the ability and the necessary skills and resources to implement adopted plans are engaged early and understand and believe in their role or roles in completing any action steps.
"Two heads are better than one." Well if that is true, what about 10 heads? 100? What about an entire community of individuals' ideas and collective knowledge (and their resources)? The concept inherent to this thought is just one more reason to believe in or acknowledge the power of engagement to create solid foundations for future actions.
How many heads and hands have contributed to plans for the community where you reside (whether your community of place or your community of interest)?
Are plans that have been adopted effective? Have they been implemented?
Why or why not?
Resources
Example of how one organization uses informal education and demonstration events to engage members in community planning: The Facebook page of Smart Growth Partnership of Westmoreland County
Learn more about a local-level arts organization and its use of social media for community and member engagement: The New Kensington Arts Center Facebook Group information page
Photo location credit: New Kensington Arts Center
