What can Public engagement learn from community organising?

WeatherizeDC has borrowed methods from the field of community organising to engage people in Washington DC in discussion and action to reduce the carbon emissions associated with their homes. This is particularly interesting as, back in March, David Cameron proposed a ‘neighbourhood army’ of 5,000 community organisers as part of the Big Society. The most well-known branch of community organisers over here is Citizens UK and their approach provides some interesting lessons in building a more engaged and active civil society.

Citizens UK has an interesting method of internal decision-making. It brings together large meetings of diverse people in order to find common ground and decide on collective priorities but does not have pre-decided aims. Learning how to have open and constructive dialogues about prioritisation will be an important challenge for public engagement in a time of severe cuts. 

Furthermore, the process of community organising can shift the debate from individual interest to the public good. WeatherizeDC works at a neighbourhood level, canvassing households and then inviting them to local meetings to encourage them to upgrade their homes to be more energy efficient. A report on the project noted that ‘at the doors, people say energy savings and comfort are their primary reasons for interest. When people gather with their neighbours and peers, they express more interest in the greater good, the economy, and jobs.’ This highlights one of the key hopes for public engagement; just the act of bringing people together in discussion makes them think about their common interests.

Initiatives such as the Sciencewise-ERC supported DECC Low Carbon Community Challenge (LCCC) are funding communities in the UK to co-produce their own responses to carbon reduction as part of a more devolved approach to tackling climate change. As communities increasingly take the reins in tackling social and environmental challenges, the techniques and principles of community organising may be useful to borrow. It would be interesting therefore to compare the impact of the similarities and differences between approaches like WeatherizeDC and the LCCC.