Making an impact
Balancing mainstreaming and innovation
You will need to consider the balance between mainstream community engagement activity (regular surveys, PCCG/neighbourhood forum meetings, liaison with community groups) and innovative consultation and engagement events - new events that have not been tried before or been part of the culture of engagement (e.g. a children's conference, a police fun day).
Mainstream activity |
Innovative activity |
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+ Can be planned into service planning and delivery cycles, training and development |
+ Can provide an impetus or boost to service activity; space and time for new thinking, a "buzz" around community engagement |
+ Methods can be tested and refined to ensure that they have impact |
+ Can reinvigorate engagement with certain sections of the community (e.g. launch events for initiatives, conferences for specific sections of the community) |
- Can become stale/too mainstream - service and participants can lose interest and impetus |
- Can "steal the thunder" of already established activities and make people participating in existing initiatives feel devalued |
- Initiative and participants may be seen as "native" and too close to the organisation, not able to collect a full range of objective views |
- Can be seen as "finished" when the project is over and people can get back to their "normal" jobs |
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