Book: Environments for All Chapter: 2.2 Working with local communities Section: Strategies for participation Metadata: Details Buy this book

The biggest challenge for any programme is getting people involved and active. You're far more likely to be successful if people have a chance to actually get involved in the decision-making and management of the work, rather than just being consulted or asked to turn out for an occasional afternoon's work.

If you want to get other groups and people involved in a new community project first ask yourself:

• Why do we want them?;
• How would we like them to be involved?; and
• What would they get out of being involved?

The last point is crucial - we all want to know 'what's in it for me?' If another group, with their own plans and priorities, are going to get involved in your work, then they need to be aware of the benefits to them.

This brings us to participation strategies. There are many techniques for encouraging participation from games to complex exercises. Almost all have elements in common: there is some form of 'process' (meetings, surveys, special events etc), which is usually set up by professionals (planners, project workers, local council staff) with a view to getting the opinions and perhaps the involvement of the people.

Any strategy should be clear about how the people and the professionals fit in with the process.

What do we mean by participation?

People often use words such as 'involvement', 'consultation', 'participation' and 'engagement' interchangeably, without clear ideas of how these processes differ. However, each has a distinct meaning, which should be taken into account when planning a project:

• Involvement is a general word, covering all the ways in which local people take part in discussions and planning.
• Consultation occurs when local people are asked for their views about a proposal or a project that someone else has developed, or about a service they are using.
• Participation occurs when people are invited to be involved in planning and developing a project and can help shape it from the start. They may also be invited to help manage the project or service.
• Engagement can best be seen as the long-term result of participative working: people don't just turn up to specific events: they are involved for the long-term, they feel some ownership of the work that is being done and they can suggest new ideas etc.

 Participation takes place in many different ways, for example:

• People may participate in meetings about a new community centre because they want to know that it will meet their needs;
• People may participate in a planning inquiry because they want to stop a supermarket being built on fields near their home; and
• People may participate in a local project because they can see that it is likely to make their neighbourhood a better place to live.

 From consultation to participation

One way of seeing the difference between Consultation and Participation is the 'ladder of participation' developed by an American, Sherry Arnstein in 1969. She suggested the differences between processes were based on the level of control which the participants have in any process.

The Ladder of Participation

1 Citizen Control

2 Delegated Power       Degree of citizen power

3 Partnership

4 Placation

5 Consultation               Degree of tokenism

6 Informing

7 Therapy                       Non participation

8 Manipulation

Here consultation is represented as just one approach to participation - one which can help groups to work out what kind of involvement is being proposed. But it can make things seem too simple: different groups in the community may be at different levels on the ladder (they may have better contacts with the local council, and thus have more influence), and processes change and develop over time. There is often no need for a group to 'climb the ladder' if their needs are met in other ways.

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