Designed for
– and with
our communities
Let’s move beyond meetings, and make community engagement a delightful experience.
Our aspiration is to amplify community power and foster deeper participation in decision-making processes, through the creation of tools and approaches that facilitate delightful engagement and information sharing for people working to improve our collective wellbeing.
Creation of the Kit
Research and Engagement
To design the kit, we first spent many many hours in the field, doing our own engagement. We also researched hundreds of practices that helped us distill the most impactful contents for the Kit.
Primary Research
10
1:1 interviews
Residents
Engagement organizers
Government staff
Artists
Designers
Communications professionals
13
Intercepts
Residents
Police officers
Teachers
Social workers
Meeting participants
Engagement organizers
15
Engagement events observed
Standing grassroots Community meetings
Large-scale developments meetings (e.g., casino, stadium)
Urban planning events (e.g., nature trails, neighborhood improvements)
Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy meetings
Chicago City Hall meetings
Design Charettes
Virtual roundtables
Secondary Research
150+
Engagement resources reviewed
Thorough review of Elevated Chicago’s 2018 Community Engagement Principles
70+ Public engagement methods, best practices and tools
12 Websites of mass developments
Review of 50 Aldermanic processes for engagement
10 Emerging tech solutions
Creation of the Kit
Insights and Outcomes
These are some of the findings that helped us create the Kit and its contents.
1
Community engagement often means "meeting."
More wholistic engagement that follows ethical principles and honors the local context can become a new norm.
2
The onus of engagement rests on residents and burdens them.
Engagement needs to be enjoyable, structured, and deliver results.
3
Elevated Chicago’s principles are comprehensive and remain relevant but are underutilized.
The principles can be organized to drive action in the field.
4
Engagement professionals often learn their craft through experience.
There are limited learning opportunities for civic engagement methods and tactics.
Anatomy of the Kit
Project Definition Placemat
This placemat is meant to set a strong foundation for you and your team to align on project objectives. However, it is also meant to be a flexible document you’ll continuously revisit. As you learn new things, you should adjust your project definition and move at the speed of trust.
Anatomy of the Kit
Methods and Tactics
After completing the placemat, it’s time to carry out the engagement! Based on your project definition, choose the relevant methods and tactics to build trust and strong relationships with the communities you interact with.
Each card shows the objectives of the tactic to help you create the best plan for your project. On the back, you will find a step-by-step explanation of how to carry out the tactic and insider tips/watchouts to prepare you and your team before engaging communities.