Deliver community engagement for a creative or cultural organisation
Overview
This standard is about delivering community engagement activities for a creative or cultural organisation. This is to encourage new target audiences, customers, or visitors to engage with your work or to develop ongoing relationships with current community groups. It is also about providing your current audiences, customers, or visitors with activities which they will benefit from and enjoy.
It includes researching previous success, identifying barriers, working with communities, planning engagement activities, aims, objectives and timescales, developing inclusive programmes and evaluating success.
This standard is for anyone who delivers community engagement for a creative or cultural organisation.
Performance criteria
You must be able to:
- use reliable information to identify your organisation's local and regional audiences and communities and their activities and interests
- use reliable information to research the success of community programmes, exhibitions, and events from previous engagement activities
- identify how `barriers' that inhibit engagement of all parts of communities can be overcome in line with organisational diversity and inclusion policies
- work with communities and colleagues to identify engagement activities and evaluation criteria relevant to local needs
- work with appropriate people to develop an engagement plan which specifies engagement activities, aims, objectives and timescales
- develop programmes which relate to the interests of community audiences, integrating events or programmes with other engagement activities when appropriate
- make sure programmes are inclusive of all community members in line with organisational diversity and inclusion policies
- work with appropriate people in the organisation to identify and obtain finance and funding for engagement activities
- use marketing methods appropriate to target audiences when marketing is required, working with marketing colleagues when required
- develop ongoing networks and sharing of practice for community engagement with relevant colleagues in the sector
- provide practical opportunities for improving communities understanding of your work
- collect and collate relevant information to evaluate the success of community engagement programmes against aims and objectives
Knowledge and Understanding
You need to know and understand:
- organisational diversity and inclusion policies and strategies
- why you and your organisation have chosen to engage with communities
- how to identify local and regional audiences, customers or visitors and their needs
- the importance and benefits of engaging a diverse range of communities and things to consider when doing so
- how to engage with and work directly with communities and community organisations
- various methods and types of engagement
- the benefits, uses and disadvantages of technology in community engagement, including alternative approaches for those who don't have access to it
- the potential challenges encountered by people with mobility, hearing and sight impairment and neurodivergent conditions and the different strategies available to ensure inclusivity
- how to develop an approach to engaging with other local organisations
- how to use training and/or standard frameworks to deliver best practice
- how to engage with people and communities in a respectful way
- models of research that can contribute to organisational and community learning
- how to set realistic and meaningful evaluation criteria your community engagement methods
- how to find out about new approaches to professional practice and community activities
- uses of self-evaluation as a way of learning together and improving practice