Routledge Creative Community Planning: Transformative Engagement Methods for Working at the Edge (Earthscan Tools for Community Planning)

Creative Community Planning provides clear access to emerging innovations in artistic, narrative, embodied and technological methods. Reflecting on the wide continuum of participatory practice, the authors explore the frontiers of community engagement within a fresh sustainability framework. Leading planning theorists, researchers and practitioners in the field reflect with the authors on the many successes and challenges in engaging with a diversity of people in rural and urban communities. These conversations reveal creativity as key to enhancing existing engagement practices. Concepts and practical applications thread through the book, including community visioning, participatory research and reporting, conflict resolution, poetry and planning language, theatre, photography, film and websites. Review 'Wendy and her colleagues have done it again ... this new book provides a wealth of creative wisdom that can help unlock opportunities that we never ever see coming when we begin a project.' Dr Mike Mouritz, Head, Sustainable Futures Unit, HASSELL, Perth, Western Australia 'Wendy Sarkissian is well known as an instigator of imaginative engagement processes that have enlarged the boundaries of participation theory and practice. In this book Sarkissian and co-author, poet-planner Dianna Hurford, bring together a set of participation practices that link the person and the planet through art, poetry, drama, planned surprises, and play. By drawing people away from their standard patterns of interaction, these inspiring and transformative tools and approaches have the potential to create plans, policies, and agreements that can really make a difference. There is much to learn from this thought-provoking book.' Ann Forsyth, Professor of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University 'Wendy Sarkissian and Dianna Hurford are the Margaret Mead and Mary Oliver of the community development world, combining youth and experience, poetry and playfulness, toughness and tenderness, to the challenges of living well and sustainably on our planet. Inviting us to the edge of the known world of community planning and engagement, they then gently push us off into space and give us the wings to fly: wings of beauty, creativity and relationship. It's a journey from paralysis to action, from isolation to connection, from homogeneity to polyphony: no less than a new way of being for community engagement practitioners committed to healthy communities.' Leonie Sandercock, professor, cross-cultural planner and film maker 'In Creative Community Planning Sarkissian and Hurford deliver an important message with punch and spice: It's time to go beyond business-as-usual civic engagement. It's not enough to find out the public's priorities and concerns or seek public buy-in on community plans and policies. The public represents a tremendously underutilized community asset: a source of wisdom and creativity in finding solutions to the complex issues (the 'wicked messes') that face communities everywhere. The challenge is to find ways to bring out the public's wisdom through creative community engagement. This book launches us on the path.' Dr Patricia A. Wilson, Professor of Planning and Civic Engagement, University of Texas, Austin 'Wendy and her colleagues have done it again. Raised the bar on our insights in how to undertake meaningful engagement programs. For me, as a planning practitioner who spends a lot of time on urban regeneration, often within communities that are disenfranchised in some way, this new book provides a wealth of creative wisdom that can help unlock opportunities that we never ever see coming when we begin a project.' Dr Mike Mouritz, Head, Sustainable Futures Unit, HASSELL, Perth, Western Australia 'Wendy and her colleagues challenge the idea that first comes knowledge, then comes action - for how can we begin to learn, to listen, to inquire, to wonder, to imagine if we're not already rooted in a place, in a histo