Planning a consultation event

When planning any kind of participation event, the most important thing to consider is who the audience is, and what you are hoping to achieve with them.

This focus will help you consider:

• Whether an event is definitely the best format
• Whether it should be a council-led event, or you should partner with someone else
• The related practicalities like the format, venue, approach to invitations, agenda etc. What will make this an attractive event for your audience?

In-person events often offer a more personal and discussion-based opportunity for communities to participate. But that only works when people are motivated to attend, and fully able to contribute when they arrive. If you choose to run an online event it is worth giving similar attention to planning how the event will run and what you hope to achieve from it.

There are some key considerations for event planning:

• Planning: Successful events require a high degree of advance planning. Especially if you are developing a new event format, build in additional time for planning logistics and responding to new developments.
• Attendees: Understanding how you are going to reach potential attendees should occur before you even decide to run an event, as this is a critical success factor. If you don’t have existing relationships, consider if you can work with partners or soft-test your outreach ideas. Last-minute invitations are unlikely to work.
• Agenda / format: Events offer many opportunities for creative activities and formats. Check out one example of an inventive participation event.
• Accessibility: Accessibility is about making sure that everyone is able to engage fully in your event. It is particularly important to consider who is most affected by the work at hand, or who might struggle to engage without additional support. You need to consider both where and how the event are held, and what happens during the event – see the Who to Involve section for things to consider. You can also see some more support on venue-specific considerations.
• Facilitating: Consider who is best-positioned to facilitate a comfortable and open conversation. Sometimes it is helpful to have an external facilitator to allow you to listen more actively, or to allow people to be more honest if there are tensions. Or sometimes a partner will be better positioned to facilitate if they have the strongest relationships and themselves has a stake in supporting a positive outcome. If you are facilitating meetings or focus groups yourself, you can find more support in the links.
• Following up: Like any participation activity, follow up is key. Plan in advance how you intend to follow-up with people, check that this suits them, and make sure you follow through with a clear outline of next steps.