Creatively co-creating a Community Plan
What’s a Guelph? And where is it going?
Guelph is about an hour drive from Toronto with one of the fastest growing populations and economies in Canada. And with rapid growth comes big challenges and tremendous opportunities.
To build a community with intention and purpose everyone needs to contribute to the process, know where we’re going, and understand how we intend to work together.
We needed a plan.
To build one that would resonate, build relationships and trust, we needed to talk to citizens (lots of them) and conduct research (lots of it).
We needed to follow our principles to build the plan the right way:
• Every voice has value—we wanted to be balanced and representative;
• We wanted to use work, not make work;
• And we wanted to be inclusive and have fun.
• Every voice has value—we wanted to be balanced and representative;
• We wanted to use work, not make work;
• And we wanted to be inclusive and have fun.
And the plan needed to be useful:
• It would make community direction visible and track progress.
• We would collect community intelligence that can and will be used by City staff and the community.
• It would act as a foundation for advocacy uniting the voices of our community with our institutions and leaders.
• It would make community direction visible and track progress.
• We would collect community intelligence that can and will be used by City staff and the community.
• It would act as a foundation for advocacy uniting the voices of our community with our institutions and leaders.
To act in those ways and accomplish our goals we needed to develop a wide range of creative, inclusive tools that would be welcoming and adaptable in lots of different engagement opportunities.
To start, we wanted to base our conversation in facts and statistical trends in a way brought people in instead of turning them off. Those numbers come in all shapes and sizes and from many different sources and formats.
We took it all in and created an infographic of what Guelph would look like as a Village of 100 people. It tells us who we are and some of the changes and challenges on the way. It’s accessible to all ages and levels of education, it works online, in print and large format. And it’s useful to schools, businesses, the non-profit sector and government.
Graphic created using Adobe InDesign and Illustrator.
With the facts as foundations and a video explaining what we were up to we started to engage. The challenge was reaching people living in the margins, people who just don’t talk to government, and newcomers to our community.
We leaned on community leaders through a Community Round Table to help us follow our principles and reach both broadly and deeply into all corners of Guelph.
We started with a website and engagement platform. People could follow the process and engage as fully online as in real life.
https://guelph.ca/plans-and-strategies/community-plan/
We went the traditional route with marketing and social media. We used newspaper, digital, bus ads and the City's social media channels to encourage community participation.
Graphic created using Adobe Photoshop and InDesign.
We gave up control of the conversation and invited people to hold their own conversations. We created a conversation starter kit and card game called Cards for Community.
We went where people were—to their meetings events and festivals. We had bookmarks in multiple languages, tattoos, t-shirts, postcards, headlines and finger paint.
And we used a household telephone survey to get a quantitative understanding of what matters most to people, what they value and what we should be focused on.
We collected experts and held focused conversations by sector: business; environment; arts and culture; social, health and education.
We integrated work that’s already approved and underway. We studied 38 strategic plans, 25 City of Guelph plans and 13 collaboration-based plans, in what we lovingly call our ‘master plan scan for the Community Plan’. This unique research and network map can show us, for example, what plans already exist related to the environment and what directions and goals are they working towards. It shows us new opportunities to align and where there are gaps.
And then we reported back with products, lots of products: our year of listening engagement analysis, plan scan report, phone survey report, five sector workshop summaries and a discussion paper that brought everything together. And we brought the community back through a City Sprint event to validate what we heard and help prioritize the directions and goals we were proposing. All those products and reports needed to transform into large format for the event.
Once the community weighed in at the City Sprint, we were ready for a presentation to City Council. On May 16, 2019, six community leaders presented Guelph’s Community Plan to our Mayor and City Councillors. And when an uber-talented local spoken word artist presented the Plan in poetry form she was appreciated with a rare standing ovation from everyone in attendance. The Plan was unanimously supported by City Council.
The Plan clearly shows our direction, we have collected rich community knowledge that’s easy to use, and we’ve set a strong foundation for the community to advocate to other orders of government with a united voice and shared priorities.
City Council is using the Community Plan as the foundational vision for its strategic planning—to guide decisions, priorities and where they will direct resources. Community organizations are starting to use the Community Plan and its research to collaborate and align their work. Citizens see the Plan as a way to hold the community accountable for the decisions being made right now.
Along the way we worked in collaboration with hundreds of committed City staff, citizens and organizations. We worked with a great agency at Letter M Marketing, strong writers at Cadmium Red, research and analysis experts at Leger, Openly and Sage Communications, and the video and production talent from Ward 1 Studios. This kind of project only works when you can combine and profit from the collective brilliance of great community minds.
With growth comes change and many possible paths to take. Guelph now has a plan co-created by 10,000 citizens and leaders with big aspirations and the will to make it happen.
Social media metrics
Facebook impressions: 119,116
Twitter impressions: 140,642
Youtube views: 2,234
Facebook impressions: 119,116
Twitter impressions: 140,642
Youtube views: 2,234
Guelph’s Community Plan vision
We’re grounded in community and our deep connection to the environment. We look out for one another, celebrate our diversity and smile at each other in the streets. We are leaders who shape tomorrow. We tackle local and global challenges through innovation, art and action. And we’re committed to inclusive prosperity—because together, we’re stronger.
We’re grounded in community and our deep connection to the environment. We look out for one another, celebrate our diversity and smile at each other in the streets. We are leaders who shape tomorrow. We tackle local and global challenges through innovation, art and action. And we’re committed to inclusive prosperity—because together, we’re stronger.
