Build a distinct brand for community engagement projects

When the London Borough of Newham rebranded its participatory budgeting project, the team found a measurable increase in the diversity of participants thanks to a communications and brand campaign focused on putting people first.

Newham has been running its participatory budgeting project since 2018. The project is a stand-out example of civic participation in the UK, where residents are given a say in how public funds are spent in their community, building connection, trust and transparency between residents and officials.

In its fifth year, the Borough decided to rebrand the project to broaden its reach and ensure participants were more representative of the resident’s diversity.

The previous name for the project, Community Assembly, was confusing to residents of Newham, which also has citizen and youth assemblies. “We wanted something that was distinctive and recognizable for this program,” explains Sadia Ur-Rehman, Newham’s Resident Engagement & Participation Manager.

Putting people first

The People Powered Places brand the team developed puts humans front and center. It may have been tempting to instead lead with the message that residents would get the chance to allocate funds, or how much the participatory budget is worth, and this may have been effective in other communities. But the Newham team knew their community would respond better to eye-level communications, delivered with heart.

The results of the rebrand speak for themselves.

Sadia says, “We’ve seen an increase in event participation and it now better reflects Newham’s diverse communities. Our working groups across our 8 community neighborhoods are more diverse now as well.”

“We now see a majority from Asian, Black, and ethnically diverse backgrounds and that’s more reflective of the communities here in Newham.”

Did you know? Go Vocal helps ensure your engagement participants are representative of your community, with design customization and demographic tracking. Find out more.

Inclusive Proposals communications in Copenhagen

Across the North Sea in Denmark’s capital, Copenhagen, the city has been busy running a successful Proposals initiative which saw more than 12,000 participants in the first 4 months alone.

As a formalized participation process, Proposals can often have strict criteria, with only people over a certain age or with the right citizenship invited to participate. In Copenhagen, the engagement team wanted to make it as easy as possible for residents regardless of age or background to be part of setting the agenda for their city.

For this reason, says Project Manager for the City of Copenhagen Aja Faurschou Enghoff, her team decided that instead of calling the project Citizen Proposals, as they’re often known, they would call the project Københavnerforslag, or Copenhagen Proposals. This offered an angle for residents that focused on location, rather than legal status or paperwork.

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As well as the catchy brand name that ensured everyone was included, Aja and her colleagues rolled out an extensive communications plan that included pop-up events at metro stations to get out and meet residents face-to-face. They also hosted fishing pond events at the town hall, employing a fun activity from their local culture to get residents of all ages on board.

Learn more on our podcast about how bottom-up proposals enable residents to be part of setting the political agenda in Copenhagen.

Radically local communications

The London Borough of Newham also ensured that the communications for their engagement projecte went beyond its snazzy new name.

“The place-based infrastructure here is really important,” says Sadia. The Borough serves eight community neighborhoods, and the engagement team does targeted outreach to all of them, communicating about a wide range of services and engagement opportunities on offer.”

To launch People Powered Places, the team went big, using billboards to make sure their message would make an impact. But they also went micro, getting residents on board as ambassadors for the project, who could spread the word among their own social groups.

A Participatory Democracy Coordinator says, “We created a communications pack that we were sharing directly with residents and volunteer organizations, where we gave them access to our communications assets, so they could print them, share them, and put them in their email signatures.”

Using network effects helped the team to get residents and community groups on-side as ambassadors for People Powered Places, encouraging their own contacts to have their say on the local budget – something they like to call “radically local communications”.