Community Engagement
What is it?
Community engagement is the process of working collaboratively to address issues for the betterment of the community.[1] For historic preservationists, effective community engagement requires building genuine relationships, productive consultation processes, relevant programs, and sustained public participation. Today, community engagement has diversified with practitioners employing various techniques across a spectrum of applications and audiences. Yet methods often consist of some combination of public meetings, focus groups, forums, workshops, surveys, questionnaires, interviews, and online participation.[2]
As a concept, community engagement is an ongoing public conversation which allows people to collect information, share common values, and wrestle together with tough issues where interests may be in conflict. Iterative processes of listening, communicating, and learning build community knowledge and lead to better, more widely accepted decisions, and increased public confidence in decision making. For preservationists, community engagement creates and sustains relationships with key community stakeholders to reinforce a mutual commitment to conserve more diverse historic and cultural resources for current and future generations.[3]
To carry out this process effectively, building meaningful relationships requires preservationists understand both the people and the groups being engaged. This mandates critical relationship skills, notably adaptability, flexibility, and authenticity. Successful community engagement demands time, practice, good communication, respectful civic dialogue, and patience. When done well, community engagement results in stronger, more relevant programs; cohesive, vibrant, and collaborative local networks; and broader and better-informed publics.[4]
Why is it important?
Community engagement is important because it encourages efforts to diversify who ascribes values to older places and cultural resources.[5] The United States is increasingly diverse, but official heritage preservation programs haven’t measured up to the promise or demands presented by demographic change.[6] Minority participation in orthodox preservation practice has long been limited and the picture of American history presented by designated sites understates the diversity of the country’s actual history.[7]
As public policy decisions hinge on definitions of place, it is crucial that preservationists develop inclusive methods for applying diverse understandings of place.[8] How minority communities value and experience places doesn’t necessarily conform to the dominant view and expert norms. Strict standards for architectural integrity and association are gateways to preservation protections and benefits, but in marginalized communities they are too often grounds for exclusion. The physical vestiges of marginalized groups are more than just underrepresented, they are devalued, destroyed, and made invisible.[9]
Preservationists would be wise to recognize how demographic change will alter the constituencies from which heritage practitioners turn for support. Failure to proactively conserve the country’s diverse cultural heritage threatens the relevance of traditional preservation as population shifts increasingly mainstream minority communities. Telling the stories of underrepresented communities and identifying, documenting, and preserving the place which share these narratives are essential steps toward equity and social harmony.[10]
Fortunately, heritage is increasingly viewed as a tool to accomplish various social, economic, and political goals.[11] Because the dynamics and complexities of communities require reliance on multiple disciplines, preservationists engaged in community projects must embrace interdisciplinary approaches.[12] Yet preservationists are not always equipped to navigate the complex processes for engaging and sharing decision-making with diverse publics.[13] The central question remains how nonhierarchical community-based methodologies can be merged successfully with professional standards to become more centralized and collaborative.[14]
Who does it?
Lots of disciplines use community engagement methods. Public health officials use community engagement for the purposes of communication, education, risk assessment, and intervention. Government agencies consider public participation and community outreach critical components in developing, evaluating, and implementing effective public policies. Urban planners use community engagement to identify and remediate concerns of residents and stakeholders in the process of planning, developing, expanding, and revitalizing communities. In each area, participation is a two-way engagement tool between decision-makers and stakeholders to enhance communication, cooperation, and shared responsibility for reaching consensus and addressing issues.[15]
In cultural and heritage fields, anthropologists use community engagement to help understand the different physical and cultural characteristics of the human experience. Ethnographers observe people first-hand in their natural environments and ask questions to develop in-depth understandings of their heritage. Public archaeologists collaborate with local communities to study human societies by analyzing and interpreting material culture.[16] Public historians communicate history to general audiences and engage the public in the practice and production of history.[17] Preservationists and cultural resource managers engage the public on various activities to understand, preserve, and provide for the enjoyment of historic resources.[18]
Spectrum of Participation
Citizen participation is citizen power, but not all participation is equal. For more than 50 years, Arnstein’s Ladder has served as a guide to see who has power in making decisions and governance.[19] The metaphorical “ladder” is represented by eight ascending rungs describing the different levels of public participation in government planning. The rungs ascend from lower levels of “non-participation,” to mid-level “degrees of tokenism,” to a more complete redistribution of agency with “degrees of citizen power.” The approach can easily be adapted to describe how preservationists and social scientists engage with community stakeholders.[20]
Community engagement is the process of working collaboratively to address issues for the betterment of the community.[1] For historic preservationists, effective community engagement requires building genuine relationships, productive consultation processes, relevant programs, and sustained public participation. Today, community engagement has diversified with practitioners employing various techniques across a spectrum of applications and audiences. Yet methods often consist of some combination of public meetings, focus groups, forums, workshops, surveys, questionnaires, interviews, and online participation.[2]
As a concept, community engagement is an ongoing public conversation which allows people to collect information, share common values, and wrestle together with tough issues where interests may be in conflict. Iterative processes of listening, communicating, and learning build community knowledge and lead to better, more widely accepted decisions, and increased public confidence in decision making. For preservationists, community engagement creates and sustains relationships with key community stakeholders to reinforce a mutual commitment to conserve more diverse historic and cultural resources for current and future generations.[3]
To carry out this process effectively, building meaningful relationships requires preservationists understand both the people and the groups being engaged. This mandates critical relationship skills, notably adaptability, flexibility, and authenticity. Successful community engagement demands time, practice, good communication, respectful civic dialogue, and patience. When done well, community engagement results in stronger, more relevant programs; cohesive, vibrant, and collaborative local networks; and broader and better-informed publics.[4]
Why is it important?
Community engagement is important because it encourages efforts to diversify who ascribes values to older places and cultural resources.[5] The United States is increasingly diverse, but official heritage preservation programs haven’t measured up to the promise or demands presented by demographic change.[6] Minority participation in orthodox preservation practice has long been limited and the picture of American history presented by designated sites understates the diversity of the country’s actual history.[7]
As public policy decisions hinge on definitions of place, it is crucial that preservationists develop inclusive methods for applying diverse understandings of place.[8] How minority communities value and experience places doesn’t necessarily conform to the dominant view and expert norms. Strict standards for architectural integrity and association are gateways to preservation protections and benefits, but in marginalized communities they are too often grounds for exclusion. The physical vestiges of marginalized groups are more than just underrepresented, they are devalued, destroyed, and made invisible.[9]
Preservationists would be wise to recognize how demographic change will alter the constituencies from which heritage practitioners turn for support. Failure to proactively conserve the country’s diverse cultural heritage threatens the relevance of traditional preservation as population shifts increasingly mainstream minority communities. Telling the stories of underrepresented communities and identifying, documenting, and preserving the place which share these narratives are essential steps toward equity and social harmony.[10]
Fortunately, heritage is increasingly viewed as a tool to accomplish various social, economic, and political goals.[11] Because the dynamics and complexities of communities require reliance on multiple disciplines, preservationists engaged in community projects must embrace interdisciplinary approaches.[12] Yet preservationists are not always equipped to navigate the complex processes for engaging and sharing decision-making with diverse publics.[13] The central question remains how nonhierarchical community-based methodologies can be merged successfully with professional standards to become more centralized and collaborative.[14]
Who does it?
Lots of disciplines use community engagement methods. Public health officials use community engagement for the purposes of communication, education, risk assessment, and intervention. Government agencies consider public participation and community outreach critical components in developing, evaluating, and implementing effective public policies. Urban planners use community engagement to identify and remediate concerns of residents and stakeholders in the process of planning, developing, expanding, and revitalizing communities. In each area, participation is a two-way engagement tool between decision-makers and stakeholders to enhance communication, cooperation, and shared responsibility for reaching consensus and addressing issues.[15]
In cultural and heritage fields, anthropologists use community engagement to help understand the different physical and cultural characteristics of the human experience. Ethnographers observe people first-hand in their natural environments and ask questions to develop in-depth understandings of their heritage. Public archaeologists collaborate with local communities to study human societies by analyzing and interpreting material culture.[16] Public historians communicate history to general audiences and engage the public in the practice and production of history.[17] Preservationists and cultural resource managers engage the public on various activities to understand, preserve, and provide for the enjoyment of historic resources.[18]
Spectrum of Participation
Citizen participation is citizen power, but not all participation is equal. For more than 50 years, Arnstein’s Ladder has served as a guide to see who has power in making decisions and governance.[19] The metaphorical “ladder” is represented by eight ascending rungs describing the different levels of public participation in government planning. The rungs ascend from lower levels of “non-participation,” to mid-level “degrees of tokenism,” to a more complete redistribution of agency with “degrees of citizen power.” The approach can easily be adapted to describe how preservationists and social scientists engage with community stakeholders.[20]
Today, preservationists engaged in community outreach can struggle to reach much beyond the bottom rungs of Arnstein’s Ladder. This ensures an illusory form of participation that, at best, results in cursory consultation, one-way dialogue, and placation, and, at worst, leaves stakeholders voiceless and vulnerable to manipulation. The goal should be for citizens to share planning and decision-making responsibilities with conventional experts to ensure meaningful contributions and accountability. However, there is often a strong desire among professionals to maintain traditional power dynamics, control the process, and perpetuate the status quo.[21]
Further Concerns
Historically marginalized groups often face real and enduring barriers to participation. This is an especially relevant consideration for a project seeking to prepare an Asian Americans in Maryland historic context statement. Racial minorities may be skeptical of the motives of those deemed in authority and hesitant to cooperate. Preservation projects may appear despairingly overwhelming or of little consequence for traditionally underrepresented groups. Finally, preservationists must realize that traditional outreach like daytime meetings can be inaccessible to those who work, and evening meetings may receive inadequate notification.[22]
Furthermore, civic engagement through meetings, hearings, surveys, and focus groups tend to favor those with access to resources—e.g., older, white, wealthy, educated, property owners. Those excluded tend to be lower income, lower educational attainment, immigrants, non-English speakers, students, and otherwise young people. These economic and racial disparities rob the civic engagement environment of its most precious asset: public trust. Lack of trust is a strong barrier to making community engagement meaningful and effective, as stakeholders are far less likely to cooperate and contribute.[23]
Opportunities & Methods
Cultural heritage increasingly is seen as a tool for social justice and community empowerment.[24] Celebrating our nation’s racial and ethnic diversity and preserving the historic assets representative of our heterogeneity promotes equity and access. For this project, identification, documentation, and recognition of hitherto un-recognized Asian American historical resources in Maryland can provide underrepresented communities important tools to accomplish various economic, social, and political goals.
The following two methods for community engagement help distribute authority between preservationists and stakeholders more evenly. These methodologies differ from other social social methodologies in the fact that participants are considered both subjects and researchers. There is much potential for preservationists to learn from residents with situated knowledge and much to be gained by community stakeholders who share authority in determining outcomes.
Further Concerns
Historically marginalized groups often face real and enduring barriers to participation. This is an especially relevant consideration for a project seeking to prepare an Asian Americans in Maryland historic context statement. Racial minorities may be skeptical of the motives of those deemed in authority and hesitant to cooperate. Preservation projects may appear despairingly overwhelming or of little consequence for traditionally underrepresented groups. Finally, preservationists must realize that traditional outreach like daytime meetings can be inaccessible to those who work, and evening meetings may receive inadequate notification.[22]
Furthermore, civic engagement through meetings, hearings, surveys, and focus groups tend to favor those with access to resources—e.g., older, white, wealthy, educated, property owners. Those excluded tend to be lower income, lower educational attainment, immigrants, non-English speakers, students, and otherwise young people. These economic and racial disparities rob the civic engagement environment of its most precious asset: public trust. Lack of trust is a strong barrier to making community engagement meaningful and effective, as stakeholders are far less likely to cooperate and contribute.[23]
Opportunities & Methods
Cultural heritage increasingly is seen as a tool for social justice and community empowerment.[24] Celebrating our nation’s racial and ethnic diversity and preserving the historic assets representative of our heterogeneity promotes equity and access. For this project, identification, documentation, and recognition of hitherto un-recognized Asian American historical resources in Maryland can provide underrepresented communities important tools to accomplish various economic, social, and political goals.
The following two methods for community engagement help distribute authority between preservationists and stakeholders more evenly. These methodologies differ from other social social methodologies in the fact that participants are considered both subjects and researchers. There is much potential for preservationists to learn from residents with situated knowledge and much to be gained by community stakeholders who share authority in determining outcomes.
1. Participatory Action Research (PAR) — PAR is a collaborative approach to research that involves all stakeholders throughout the research process, from establishing the research question, to developing data collection tools, to analyses and dissemination of findings.[25] The process of PAR is iterative and informal and begins with participants observing the effects of certain actions in their community and reflecting on these actions in order to begin a planning process. The cycle repeats with observations on the actions that were taken to implement the plan. Community participants continue the process until they are satisfied with the results.
The process[26]:
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Further Reading:
Wells, Jeremy. “In Stakeholders We Trust: Changing the Ontological and Epistemological Orientation of Built Heritage Assessment through Participatory Action Research.” In How to Assess Built Heritage? Assumptions, Methodologies, Examples of Heritage Assessment Systems. Florence-Lublin: Romualdo Del Bianco Foundatione and Lublin University of Technology, 2015.
Burns, Janice C., Deanna Y. Cooke, and Christine Schweidler. A Short Guide to Community Based Participatory Action Research. Los Angeles, CA: Advancement Project and Healthy City, 2011.
Afzalan, Nader and Brian Muller. “Online Participatory Technologies: Opportunities and Challenges for Enriching Participatory Planning.” Journal of the American Planning Association 84, no. 2 (2018): 162-177.
Botchwey, Nicha D., Nick Johnson, L. Kate O’Connell, and Anna J. Kim. “Including Youth in the Ladder of Citizen Participation: Adding Rungs of Consent, Advocacy, and Incorporation.” Journal of the American Planning Association 85, no. 3 (2019): 255-270.
Wells, Jeremy. “In Stakeholders We Trust: Changing the Ontological and Epistemological Orientation of Built Heritage Assessment through Participatory Action Research.” In How to Assess Built Heritage? Assumptions, Methodologies, Examples of Heritage Assessment Systems. Florence-Lublin: Romualdo Del Bianco Foundatione and Lublin University of Technology, 2015.
- Synopsis: Orthodox (positivistic) preservation tools to assess the value of built heritage are inadequate. Heterodox heritage theory now presents the alternative paradigms of constructivism, critical theory, and postcolonial theory that are more suited to understanding multiple truths and the pluralistic sociocultural values of a wider range of stakeholders.
Burns, Janice C., Deanna Y. Cooke, and Christine Schweidler. A Short Guide to Community Based Participatory Action Research. Los Angeles, CA: Advancement Project and Healthy City, 2011.
- Synopsis: Community place-based research recognizes that residents have the ultimate knowledge of the issues, strengths, and solutions that most impact their communities. This report provides methods for working with stakeholders to identify issues, develop research designs, recruit volunteers, develop data collection tools, implement action plans, and analyze and disseminate findings.
Afzalan, Nader and Brian Muller. “Online Participatory Technologies: Opportunities and Challenges for Enriching Participatory Planning.” Journal of the American Planning Association 84, no. 2 (2018): 162-177.
- Synopsis: Research suggests online participatory tools can be effective in addressing goals of public participation, such as inclusive planning, consensus building, learning from local knowledge, and mobilizing social action. Preservationists collaborating with formal or informal networks or related professionals can facilitate the effective use of online participatory tools within their own organizations.
Botchwey, Nicha D., Nick Johnson, L. Kate O’Connell, and Anna J. Kim. “Including Youth in the Ladder of Citizen Participation: Adding Rungs of Consent, Advocacy, and Incorporation.” Journal of the American Planning Association 85, no. 3 (2019): 255-270.
- Synopsis: Practicing planners are challenged with ways to authentically include youth voices in productive and non-tokenistic decision-making frameworks. Planners, including preservationists, can apply lessons drawn from these case studies to engage youth in different contexts to support the elevation of their involvement, voice, and power in preservation planning.
2. Co-Production — Co-production is a participation model intended to create a dynamic, iterative, and ongoing approach to dismantle barriers to influential community participation as they continually arise.[27] Co-production engages stakeholders in all elements of the social change process, from determining the problems to address to identifying and delivering solutions, often through piloted interventions. The method attempts to share and engage economic and political power at each stage by facilitating sustained community participation and sharing resources, power, and decision-making authority over every dimension of the process. Co-production supports responsiveness and learning, offering opportunities to adjust, reassess, and continually progress even if a strategy falls short.
|
Further Reading:
Rosen, Jovanna and Gary Painter. “From Citizen Control to Co-Production: Moving Beyond a Linear Conception of Citizen Participation.” Journal of the American Planning Association 85, no. 3 (2019): 335-347.
Roberts, Andrea and Grace Kelly. “Remixing as Praxis: Arnstein’s Ladder Through the Grassroots Preservationists’s Lens.” Journal of the American Planning Association 85, no. 3 (2019): 301-320.
Rosen, Jovanna and Gary Painter. “From Citizen Control to Co-Production: Moving Beyond a Linear Conception of Citizen Participation.” Journal of the American Planning Association 85, no. 3 (2019): 335-347.
- Synopsis: Co-production models can offer new ways for preservation planners to advance more inclusive community participation, with greater resident sharing power. Practitioners must extend participation beyond engagement and inclusion, using adaptive long-term participation models, with capacity building and resource sharing, to build and maintain community power. Power holders must hold spaces of power for communities while simultaneously building resident ability to gain, retain, and exert local control.
Roberts, Andrea and Grace Kelly. “Remixing as Praxis: Arnstein’s Ladder Through the Grassroots Preservationists’s Lens.” Journal of the American Planning Association 85, no. 3 (2019): 301-320.
- Synopsis: Remixing consists of strategically sampling, looping, and layering promising local knowledge with that of experts to support citizen-centered preservation planning. Findings suggest action researchers and preservationists must “remix” roles and the rungs of Arnstein’s Ladder of participation to sustain and center stakeholder involvement when planning with marginalized communities. By centering culturally informed planning approaches and negotiating with stakeholders, professionals can create conditions that support sustained involvement.
Examples of community engagement in preservation projects from a Dismantle Preservation panel.
References
1. Jacquelyn L. Tuxill, Nora J. Mitchell, and Delia Clark, Stronger Together: A Manual on the Principles and Practices and Civic Engagement (Prepared for the National Park Service), (Woodstock, VT: Conservation Study Institute, 2009).
2. Tuxill, et al., Stronger Together, 9-29.
3. Tuxill, et al., Stronger Together, 3-4.
4. Tuxill, et al., Stronger Together, 4-5.
5. Erica Avrami, "Preservation's Reckoning," in Issues in Preservation Policy—Preservation and Social Inclusion, (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2020): 14.
6. Ned Kaufman, Place, Race, and Story: Essays on the Past and Future of Historic Preservation, (New York, NY: Routledge, 2009): 75-76.
7. Kaufman, Place, Race, and Story, 76.
8. Kaufman, Place, Race, and Story, 31-33.
9. Avrami, "Preservation's Reckoning," 9-19.
10. Kaufman, Place, Race, and Story, 80-86.
11. Barbara Franco, "Decentralizing Culture: Public History and Communities," in The Oxford Handbook of Public History, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017): 69-86.
12. Franco, "Decentralizing Culture," 75.
13. Avrami, "Preservation's Reckoning," 14.
14. Franco, "Decentralizing Culture," 84.
15. Kip Holley, et al., The Principles for Equitable and Inclusive Civic Engagement: A Guide to Transformative Change, (Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University, Kirwin Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, 2016).
16. Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn, Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practices (7th edition), (London: Thames & Hudson, 2017).
17. Faye Sayer, Public History: A Practical Guide (2nd edition), (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019).
18. Antoinette J. Lee, "Historic Preservations and Cultural Resource Managers: Preserving America's Historic Places," in Public History: Essays from the Field, eds., James B. Gardner and Peter S. LaPaglia, (Malabar, FL: Kreiger, 2006): 129-139.
19. Sherry A. Arnstein, "A Ladder of Citizen Participation," Journal of the American Planning Association 35, no. 4 (1969): 216-224.
20. Arnstein, "A Ladder of Citizen Participation," 216-224.
21. Andrea Roberts and Grace Kelly, "Remixing as Praxis: Arnstein's Ladder Through the Grassroots Preservationists's Lens," Journal of the American Planning Association 85, no. 3 (2019): 301-320.
22. Holley, et al., The Principles for Equitable and Inclusive Civic Engagement, 16-18.
23. Holley, et al., The Principles for Equitable and Inclusive Civic Engagement, 17-20.
24. Jeremy Wells, "In Stakeholders We Trust: Changing the Ontological and Epistemological Orientation of Built Heritage Assessment Through Participatory Action Research," in How to Assess Built Heritage? Assumptions, Methodologies, Examples of Heritage Assessment Systems, (Florence and Lublin: Romualdo Del Blanco Foundatione and Lublin University of Technology, 2015): 249-265.
25. Wells, "In Stakeholders We Trust," 251-252.
26. Wells, "In Stakeholders We Trust," 256.
27. Jovanna Rosen and Gary Painter, "From Citizen Control to Co-Production: Moving Beyond a Linear Conception of Citizen Participation," Journal of the American Planning Association 85, no. 3 (2019): 335-338.