The emphasis in this Toolkit is on qualitative research methods, most of which rely on the participation of community members to varying degrees. Part of adopting a more participatory approach is recognising ‘lived experience’, or community knowledge, as a form of expertise.
It is worth explicitly considering:
- Why are you adopting a participatory approach?
- Who are you hoping to involve and why?
- What constitutes a successful outcome (for all involved)? This will vary for different stakeholders, so you will need to ask them.
In the UK, increased community participation, as a means to promote inclusivity, empowerment and sustainability, has been pursued as a politically desirable goal for several decades now. Increased participation arguably brings citizens closer to the decisions that affect them and confers democratic legitimacy on the resulting management actions. This understanding is reflected in legislation, such as the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, which includes provision for communities to participate in decision-making regarding public services and to request the transfer of land or other assets.
The promotion of participation has not been without its critics, who argue that processes can be co-opted or coercive, limited to ‘invited spaces’ and addressing pre-identified questions (e.g. tokenistic consultation processes). Participatory processes are also open to ‘capture’ by more advantaged and empowered groups, who are familiar with the processes and terminology used in consultations. Recognition of, and specific efforts to overcome, power differentials are therefore required if there is a genuine commitment to community participation.
If you are thinking about assessing the impact of participation or participatory approaches more generally, this 2018 NPC report may be helpful (note this is not a resource on methods for assessment):
https://www.thinknpc.org/resource-hub/make-it-count-why-impact-matters-in-user-involvement/
Adopting a collaborative or a co-design approach moves beyond community members as participants in activities, to communities sharing in the decision-making and the creation and interpretation of materials.
- Collaborative assessments bring heritage practitioners and community members together in a process of shared exploration and mutual understanding, often through co-creative techniques.
- Co-design, itself a broad term encompassing multiple practices, is taken here to mean approaches that allow for meaningful input from communities in defining the problem and approach and in co-producing the outcomes.
Steps in adopting a more collaborative or co-designed approach include:
- Establishing relationships of trust with communities,
- Identifying appropriate representatives or partners, and
- Agreeing common areas of interest for the process.
The assessment and various parts of the process may be useful in different ways to those involved, but there needs to be a common understanding around the areas of focus. Importantly this is defined in discussion with communities, not something that is pre-determined that they are then consulted on.
Example: Co-design in the Dun Carloway Broch study
In the Dun Carloway Broch study, the research period coincided with a community-led discussion on the future potential of the site. This community-led process was co-ordinated by the Carloway Estate Trust (a community land owner, which also owns the monument) and had buy-in from other key stakeholders involved in the management of the site and surrounding land.
Once it was apparent that the research activities and community-led process were going to coincide, the Trust proposed the incorporation of assessment activities into their public events, and the research plan was adjusted accordingly. This co-designed approach was beneficial in securing a wide base of community engagement in the activities, as well as contributing an additional source of material to the community decision-making.
The success of the co-design approach in this case, which was a rapid study in an island location, depended on the early identification of an appropriate and interested community partner (the Carloway Estate Trust) and the fortunate coinciding of the research period with a community-led process. Where it is possible to be flexible in timing of an assessment, similar alignment of activities offers one potential mechanism to support mutually beneficial processes.