Roisin Markham

On bring a skein of wool to work day two weeks ago, I spent the day with a business team weaving their work back across the business.

The bespoke Community Engagement Lab I’ve been running with them has been centred on coaching and mentoring a specific team, a programme of work and now we are integrating that learning back across the business.

It has been amazing to see how this team has grown and developed over the last three months.

Our work together looked a lot like

• analysis of proposed approaches to working with different stakeholders and publics
• relational design development
• time spent in new approaches to broad civic groups and how to build relationships and trust
• maturity modelling of their skills and learning pathways
• engagement planning of stakeholders including
• team, 1:1 coaching and mentoring
• workshop and event observation and constructive feedback
• professional development and rigour in operations & communication
• reflection and retros

Although the work was focused community engagement in its broadest public participatory and consultation sense this quote from the Design lead says it all.

“in learning to be more considerate of participants and stakeholders we have learned to be more considerate of each other”

Design Lead, participant in BDT Community Engagement Lab

When we practice care at the core and do no harm two of the simplest rules I work with then what gets delivered is truly different.

The BDT community engagement lab addresses

• adaptive capacity to navigate complexity 
• building team and community capacity
• legacy capability
• do no harm
• power dynamics and systemic inequalities

The lab draws to a close but the work continues.