Global Community Engagement Day 2022
The state of community engagement in South Australia
Year 5 of Global Community Engagement Day is here. That’s five years of people celebrating community engagement by sharing on social media, with colleagues over a coffee and as we have seen in the past across all continents of the world (except Antarctica) with some amazing content. It has become a celebration of the people, the practice and the benefits.
I thought for this year’s blog on community engagement I would take a look closer to home. After two years of pretty much no travel, especially outside of South Australia, I wanted to see what was going on with community engagement around me. While my work life is global and I see excellent case studies from many countries, the people I network with the most in community engagement and the projects that affect me in my personal life are those rooted mainly in South Australia. The activities of the school across the road, the council area I live in, the State and even other organisations that reflect on where I live, work and play. (deletes a NIMBYesque rant)
And what I can say is… what the hell has happened to good, simple, accessible, meaningful community engagement? Where has it gone?
Three reasons why I think we have lost our way (and no Covid is not one).
- Community Engagement has become too difficult
People have a lot on their plate and the work life balance has never been more in question which essentially has an effect on whether people choose to engage or not. The professionalisation of community engagement, whilst great, has actually created barriers and while staff are often educated now in many tools and techniques, often the community isn’t. It’s become too difficult for the community.
2. Community Engagement has become too tick boxy
Policy changes have made community engagement key to some government processes, but at the same time have made it even more of a tick box exercise. Because now it has become prescribed, and has to be done in a certain way on certain projects, some of the essence has been lost to the fact we now just see the minimum levels needed. It has become too tick boxy for the community.
3. Community Engagement has become to academic
You can now get a BA degree in Community Engagement… which I love but… I’ve never seen so many academic papers on community engagement that dissect, try to improve and create new techniques/models/frameworks than I have in the last 5 years. Often written by someone who is an eternal student with no real life experience of actually working with a community, building the trust and relationship you need to succeed. Want to learn what a community wants, how to do it and build trust, in the words of Ernesto Sirolli ‘Shut up and listen! It has become too academic for the community.
Ultimately, Community Engagement has become less about the Community and more about the process. After all it should be for/with/about the Community.
It’s certainly no different in my community. The school certainly sees it as too difficult even though I have offered to help. The Council projects that hint at Community Engagement really do feel like an operation of just ticking a box to show they have ‘engaged the community’. Even though I have voiced concerns as a resident to mistakes in the constant surveys, nothing has changed. While at the State level in SA, many years of great work around a nice and clear, understandable framework and education process that benefitted all, has stagnated under the weight of academic improvements and the obvious political change.
But what about the future for my community? This year’s GCED theme is Hybrid Engagement which is an obvious benefit of the last two years of pandemic. An almost forced shift to using more online solutions because of Covid19 and then the combining of this with a return to in-person engagement, so people have more of a choice, will hopefully translate to better community engagement at a local level. In some respects the move to a more hybrid approach will actually add a level of simplification. While kissing in public is being frowned upon these days (wear a mask people) I almost want to see a return of the K.I.S.S. acronym.
Keep. It. Simple. Stupid. Or Keep it Short and Simple.
I bang my drum again but I’m hoping Hybrid Engagement will help put community back into community engagement.
In writing this, I started thinking about the future of Community Engagement in South Australia. Before Covid or BC I do believe the practice had started to wane a little, almost tread water. But from after 2019BC we got 2020WC (With Covid) and our focus on Engagement totally changed. People had to change the way they worked completely to ensure engagement happened. Learn new skills, new techniques, go online and the benefit of this has been unmeasurable. Having the ability to mimic in-person engagement in a digital space but with creativity has seen some amazing results. Not only have I seen timelines and resources increase — there are definitely more projects focussing on relationship building with a community not just decision making. I’ve seen feedback increase (quality too) and the numbers of those actively engaged has also increased with some councils I’ve spoken too saying by up to 300+%. This has now morphed into a hybrid approach giving people more choice to when, how and where they take part. EngagementWC has meant less difficulty, less tick boxy and because the changes were, in some way, forced and not driven — less academic.
I did reach out to a few other Community Engagement practitioners in South Australia to see what they thought about the future of Community Engagement. These are their unedited thoughts.
Becky — Leads Best Practice Community Engagement & Author of For the Love of Community Engagement
“I’m so proud to have spent the last 13 years working as a community engagement specialist based in South Australia. My work is now moving to sharing my knowledge and expertise at an international level, but I’m so proud that so many of the real life examples of good engagement that I talk about are from my work in South Australia. When I reflect on the amazing opportunities I’ve been given in South Australia to deliver really creative and innovative work, I can nearly always pinpoint the opportunity to an individual person working within an organisation, with a willingness to take a risk and try something different. So my hope for South Australia is that it continues to ever-so-subtly and modestly lead the way in delivering high quality community engagement in a post-pandemic world, whilst maintaining an amazing network of some of the world’s best community engagement practitioners! We rock!”
Brett — Strategic Engagement Lead
“I’m really heartened to see some good examples of co-design with community for government services starting to emerge in SA. That’s going to create momentum and impact!”
Dan — Head of Stakeholder Engagement
“For me, the future for community engagement in South Australia does look a little different. However, what will remain the same is that people, stakeholders and communities still want to be involved in decisions that affect them. I have entered 2022 with less optimism that things will return “back to normal” (whatever normal is), but with a lot more strength and confidence of our ability to adapt as we continue to engage with our respective communities. I believe that 2022 will concrete our thinking about taking a “digital first approach”. As practitioners we will need to become more proficient in using online tools and building the capability of our organisations, colleagues and let’s not forget our participants. I look forward to seeing the creativity and innovation that this shift will bring to our profession in SA, and in particular how online tools are used to support deep dialogue and deliberative processes.”
Rad — Passionate about Communities and Communication
“In my opinion, the COVID-19 pandemic has helped reshape our views on Community Engagement to a great extent. Traditional methods of engagement have seen a decline with organisations needing to adapt newer hybrid-participation strategies to reach wider, more diverse audience groups and drive engagement. Organisations need to revamp their existing engagement tools to allow for better engagement both online and offline.
Rather than approaching communities with pre-made solutions, organisations need to adapt the ‘active listening’ approach and be open minded to understand the issues at hand. At the end of the day, the community needs to be at the heart of the decision making process and need to be actively involved in the planning and implementation phase, paving the way for community led leadership allowing for civic outreach and establishing relationships with community members forging the groundwork for future engagement.”
So what do you think about the future of community engagement? Will Hybrid Engagement make it better? What’s happening locally for you? Let me know.
#globalcommunityengagementday #commengageday #communityengagementday #communityengagement
