The Ladder of Engagement

There is more than one way to create a community that includes everyone in the city, where everyone is seen as human and perceived as equally valuable.

Discover the “The Ladder of Engagement” and it’s five levels.

The Ladder of Engagement is a tool for the processes that lead to a meaningful engagement between citizens and cities, planning and society.

The Ladder of Engagement is a tool of the Civic Design Method to help with Citizen Engagement, where multiple stakeholders are gathered along their interaction process, their levels of interest, motivations and capacity, to co-create spaces of meaningful participation.

This metaphor is not about ladders, however, but rather, understanding how we enter each level of the process and which tools exist to help us do this.

These processes bring people from multiple levels into a common space – making visible the social inequality that exists in the process. This inequality makes people feel they entered an unacceptable space, a place they don’t want to be.

The Ladder of Engagement is illustrated by five levels:

Access to Knowledge: Easy access to a wide array of ideas, perspectives, debates, discussions and views.

Fully Informed: Carefully selected and structured information. Design, content and format are adapted to different communities and objectives.

Usual Inclusion: People from civil society, NGOs, business and local governments gather in the same space, do the same thing, have discussions, meet people, give presentations, make arguments etc.

Radical Inclusion: People from civil society, NGOs, business and local governments gather in the same space, e.g. in a public meeting, which everyone can enter – where everyone participates – where everyone has the chance to voice their opinion where everyone can be heard – people are together – no one is excluded or alienated.

Engagement and Action: Implementation of the needs and objectives established during the meetings, workshops and the different phases of the collaborative process.

What do you think of this tool to map the level of engagement. Do you have any suggestions?

If you have any suggestions, please share them below.

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