The Possibilities of Dialogue
January 2007
Banner photo: Herby Sachs/version-foto.de
Not So Great Expectations
I work as a community engagement consultant and have been a community development worker in deprived urban communities in England. I am passionate about people's right to have a say about decisions that affect them. For me this right is a given, but one that can be eroded by inequity, discrimination and a culture of "doing to" small communities rather than working with and for the people in them. It is crucial to promote and practice quality community engagement techniques, like dialogue, that enable people's voices to be heard.
Such practices have not always been used in this way. About 15 years ago I was a community worker in a former cotton mill town in North West England. Then, when the local authority was repainting their housing stock, tenants were not even allowed a say in the color of their front door. Not engaging with communities was a cultural norm.
Since that time the political emphasis has changed dramatically. Recently, for example, I have been involved in working with local authorities to develop policies and methods to involve communities more closely in decisions on planning.
Where I live, in Calderdale, local people were involved in looking at strengths, weaknesses and opportunities and threats for the town on five themes--crime, housing, health, the economy and education--as the starting point for a more detailed action plan. These activities bring us closer to the decision-making process and put our voices loudly into the discussion.
However, I often find there is a lack of common ground at the start of the process. People who commission dialogue and community engagement programs are cautious about not "raising expectations" in case they cannot then fulfill them. These concerns are legitimate and reasonable, and in response we make sure that processes have clear, agreed goals and boundaries. A real concern for me, however, is that often the expectations of the individuals within the communities are, if anything, too low. These people may experience impoverished education, impoverished health, housing and local services. Such life experiences can produce tragically impoverished expectations of services and for the ability of dialogue or engagement to produce change.
I recall the start of a large-scale redevelopment program for one local authority housing estate. Very open and unstructured meetings were used for local people to input ideas. There was no real understanding of how threatening such a scheme might feel to local people. I remember one woman standing up and asking if the scheme would include repairing her garden fence. She explained that she had been waiting a long time for this repair and very fluently told us what effect the damaged fence had on her quality of life and sense of security. It was such a small matter in the eyes of the officials present, and so "off the point," that her input was ignored, except when it was used as an illustration of how local people cannot be expected to understand large development programs. Yet this tiny expectation could have been a crucial starting point.
A misunderstanding of the other's point of view at the start can impede the whole engagement process.
I feel the key to successful dialogue, although it is a collective process, is for each individual to come to dialogue with an open mind, and an openness to change and being changed, while sharing skills and knowledge and respecting the skills and knowledge of others.
I am frequently inspired to see how often the new political environment encourages people to work together to develop creative solutions in true partnerships. In this way we can move away from the imposing of will, and begin working toward the imaginative shared solutions that dialogue can lead us to.
Emma Cranidge works for CAG Consultants, an employee-owned sustainable development consultancy. This article represents her personal perspective.
