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Community consultation, community engagement, public participation, public involvement, civic engagement, public engagement, citizen participation. They all sound pretty similar, but what are the differences?

International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) is the global leader in how to do community consultation appropriately and effectively.

But, community consultation is part of Doing For a community.

What lies beyond community consultation? What's involved in Doing With and Doing By local communities?

This course explains how governments, agencies, charities, non-profits, consultancies, developers and businesses can better work with and enable action by local communities. It:

1. Builds on the work of Cormac Russell and the Asset-Based Community Development approach, Jon Alexander's work on citizenship, Seth Kaplan's work on fragile and flourishing communities and the placemaking mindset and process, as 'road-tested' through Town Team Movement's work on the ground in dozens of communities in Australia and New Zealand.
2. Explains the four modes of change and the Doing To / For / With / By framework.
3. Outlines the 'Ladder of Doing' (shown below).
4. Contrasts the consumer mindset with the citizen mindset.
5. Explains what community consultation is and how it differs from community engagement. Community consultation should not be mistaken for working with and enabling action by communities. It sits in the Doing For community frame.
6. Provides tips and examples from working with and enabling action by local communities.
7. Suggests 11 grassroots tactics that you could use or suggest to help local people and informal or formal groups to create their own community-building actions.

Prior knowledge

The course does not require any particular knowledge to begin, but you may better understand the context and related ideas and approaches if you have done one of our other courses first.

Some of our other courses go into more detail on why working with local people and communities is important and how communities and cities are living systems, rather than complicated machines to be managed.

The two we would suggest are:

1. Creating Great Places in 12 Minutes (FREE; or
2. Creating Great Places: essentials for professionals (AUD $220).

Get your personal Certificate of Completion

People who complete this course will receive a personalised Certificate of Completion, endorsed by Town Team Movement and PlacemakingX, to recognise your knowledge.

Remember to press the “Complete and Continue” button in the top right-hand corner after you have finished each lesson.

Once you press the “Complete and Continue” button in the Download your Certificate of Completion section, you will be issued with your own personalised Certificate of Completion.

You have 5 months to complete the course, but extensions can be granted. You will have access to the course materials even after you have received your Certificate of Completion.

Let's get started!

Click 'Complete and Continue' to move to Lesson 1.