Over the next week or so, the Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership (GBSLEP) is holding a series of consultation events surrounding its emerging spatial plan for recovery and growth.
This forms one part of a wider consultation exercise on the plan
Is this just another consultation, given that the internet is now littered with government and organisational consultations, collectively generating consultation fatigue and cynicism over the value of such processes?
READ MORE: {}
This blog starts with the proposition that public engagement is vital to inform effective decision-making processes and outcomes.
However, engagement needs to be carefully designed to maximise the value of the process.
So it is interesting to note that the GBSLEP has just designed a game of growth as part of its consultation.
Thus I want to consider the value of using a game format for public engagement.
Using a board game format imposes certain rules on the engagement agenda which takes people outside their usual response mindset.
Most Read
In advocating the use of games, I argue that this needs to form part of an overall engagement strategy where there is a mix of approaches in order to target different publics and, in particular, to go beyond what I call the ‘usual suspects’, whose voices are always heard but who, for various reasons, may not represent the true voice of a community.
So I am pleased to be part of the spatial planning group of the GBSLEP, comprising a voluntary grouping of public sector, private, environmental and academic planners working together to develop an effective spatial plan to complement the ‘Delivering Growth’ strategy of the GBSLEP.
As an integral part of its public engagement strategy we have co-designed a ‘game of growth’ to enthuse, inform and provoke responses to the consultation and so shape the plan.
The game revolves around 30 squares that cover the different opportunity spaces across the GBSLEP ‘banana’; from East Staffordshire in the North through Cannock Chase, Lichfield, Tamworth, Birmingham, Solihull, Redditch, Bromsgrove and Wyre Forest in the South.
Some squares include issues across the neighbouring LEPs so as to promote more strategic thinking.
The format involves some preliminary briefings by planning staff with the game being played at separate tables with the questions and agendas being determined by the throw of a dice rather than their own ‘soapbox’ issues.
The dice forces people on the table to engage with an issue, by chance, as they make their unique journey across the GBSLEP.
Don’t miss
There is a managed discussion enabling the sharing of viewpoints and then, having listened to arguments, people formulate their own ideas in the response sheets.
The key benefit of this approach is that it brings strategic planning policy to life with questions framed to enable pro-active consideration of particular options rather than the usual planning response to the threat of an imminent development leading to an unproductive, confrontational and polarised responses.
It also forces people to look wider than the local; at the GBSLEP issues even if the answers reveal a widespread feeling that the LEP boundary is not functional for many planning purposes.
However, for successful engagement there has to be a process and reason for such events which goes way beyond simply ticking a box to show that the public have been consulted.
The GBSLEP spatial plan is in exciting territory here; as a non-statutory collaborative plan it is continually evolving.
The public consultation events do provide a real opportunity to influence the next stages of plan in a way that is rarely encountered in normal plan-making processes.
This evolving and organic process of plan formation might look a bit like ‘making it up as it goes along’ but that provides the basis for a more collaborative and responsive plan shaped by the people in the area as much as the professional planning partnership behind it.
So the message is that a game format can help you go beyond your usual agendas and, by so doing, help you grapple with wider issues, learning from the group discussions and, above all, in a world increasingly dominated by texting, twitter and web-interactions, having face to face social interaction on issues determined by chance, is damn good fun!
- Alister Scott is Professor of Environment and Spatial Planning at Birmingham City University