Implementing your project
Challenges: planning and design
A typical community engagement event needs some practical planning as well as the broader project planning discussed in the Finalising your approach section. Each project will involve different practical challenges. By looking through the list of questions below, you can begin to think about the practical issues you need to address for your project.
- When are you planning to hold the event?
- Have you allowed sufficient time for preparing and running the event?
- Is the event taking place at a time convenient for your participants?
- Where are you going to hold the event?
- Is it a suitable location and type of venue for your participants?
- Has the venue been booked?
- Do the participants know where the venue is?
- Who do you need to attend the event?
- Are you sure you know who the participants should be?
- How are you going to invite or recruit people for the event? (also see Recruitment and outreach section below)
- Are these people you know directly?
- Are they people who can be contacted through partner bodies or other external organisations?
- Do you need to use external expert recruiters?
- Should you just advertise the event?
- Will people need a financial or other incentive to encourage them to attend?
- Are there issues that need to be addressed if you do provide incentives?
- How are you going to structure the event?
- How are you going to ensure that the day meets your aims?
- What might a timetable for the day look like?
- What practical support do you need provide at the event?
- Do you need to use facilitators?
- If so, have you got internal people you could use or do you need to use external people?
- If you need to use external people, how will you find them?
- What other practical things do you need at the event e.g. refreshements, IT support, visual aids?
- How will you record what happens at the event?
- How will you analyse what comes out of the event?
- If this one of a number of events, how will you analyse the findings?
- How will you report the findings?
- What is your reporting timescale?
- What form should the reporting take e.g. written, internet, presentation?
- How will you disseminate the findings?
- Who needs to know about the findings in your organisation?
- Who needs to know externally?
- How will you ensure the findings feed into decision-making?
- Are there decision-making cycles that the outcomes will need to feed into?
- Who in your organisation needs to be aware of the results?
- Who needs to be aware of it externally?
 |
 |