In Praise of Total Community: One step on from Total Place

As I wrote yesterday Total Place has been an initiative to look again at how public services are delivered. Birmingham was a pilot area and have taken the idea one step further to what they called Total Community. 

They understood the limitations of Total Place in collaborating with the public so when it came to looking at changing a whole area of the city this

meant much more active involvement of citizens than hitherto in the ambition for [Total] place, in its physical regeneration and development, and in the reshaping of public services

What they say about Community engagement and co‐design

We are exploring methods of engaging with the existing and potential future communities with a view to increasing participation, empowerment and well‐being. These include:

• understanding what our existing community engagement channels tell us
• thinking more critically about aspirations and how the community can hold services to account
• exploration of models of co‐production to improve service re‐design, including for example the 10 focus groups of clients of the Adults and Communities Directorate
• establishing a community strategic planning/future search process, in which people can be more connected and engaged in planning processes. We have commissioned a project which will be completed by the end of February to begin to test imaginative methods of community engagement and provide early data.

I think it is light on the detail but it is a step in the right direction. A city looking at how to engage, collaborate and make partners of those who use and essentially own the services.