Involve's People and Participation - An Online Guide to Public Engagement

Headshift built a wiki based platform for Involve to share their research, case studies and methods for encouraging public participation. The idea was to open up this information to open collaboration with interested people, extending its relevance and allowing continual evolution of the content. The site has been quoted in government community policy as a key part of its Action Plan for Community Empowerment

Building On A Successful Base

People & Participation is based on Involve's successful book by the same name, launched in 2005. The book provided a useful summary of participatory methods and practice but was static in nature. People & Participation is more dynamic, with both site authors and site users adding their knowledge and experience to the resource. The effect is to create a collaborative experience which a book simply cannot achieve.

Comparing theory and practise

The online resource is split into different sections with a combination of Involve authored editorial content and community submitted content. The platform is modular and designed to be scalable for future development.

The interactive process planner helps users choose which participatory methods are most suitable to their situation by answering a series of questions.

The Methods section providea a how-to guide authored by Involve.

The Case Studies section provides examples of how public participation has been used, and invites users to add their own experiences. The aim is to develop the resource by learning from the experiences of others.

Other areas include News and Events (RSS and Calender functionality), Ask an Expert (Web to Email functionality) and a Participation Library (Upload Files and Tag Navigation functionality). Each of the sections are easily updatable and editable with little or no technical knowledge because the site is built on a wiki.

Balancing editorial control and openness

People and Participation was developed with a granular permission system in mind. The site strikes a balance that allows Involve editorial control in certain areas, but also having spaces that invites users to submit content, allowing the knowledge of the community to improve the resource.