Community Engagement Skills Training

Planning Aid Scotland are running their Community Engagement Skills Training at MyEdinburgh - The Bakery on Wednesday 24 March, from 10am to 4pm. It's a one-day workshop that walks you through how to plan, deliver and evaluate public engagement that actually works, rather than just ticking a box. The whole thing is built around SP=EED — Successful Planning = Effective Engagement and Delivery — a framework for best practice in community engagement that PAS put together to help people get better at engagement in planning and placemaking.

If that sounds a bit jargon-heavy, here's what it actually means: the framework is recognised in the Scottish Government's Planning Advice Note 3/2010 on community engagement and it sits alongside the National Standards for Community Engagement. It breaks engagement down into three levels — informing, consulting and partnership — and then looks at eight practical criteria: transparency and integrity, co-ordination, information, appropriateness, responsiveness, inclusiveness, monitoring and evaluating, and learning and sharing. The day combines practical tools, group exercises and shared learning with other practitioners, so you're not just listening to a presentation — you're working through it with other people doing similar work.

There's also a bit more to it if you want to take it further. After the session, you can go for SP=EED Verification, an online assessment of your competence in the approach with mentoring support from a Planning Aid Scotland staff member. The sessions run several times a year, and they can also be commissioned for an entire organisation if that suits you better than coming along on your own.

The workshop runs from 10am to 4pm at MyEdinburgh - The Bakery, 18 Brunswick Street Lane, Edinburgh, EH7 5JG, and costs £300.