Cultural plan captures community input by design

Port Macquarie-Hastings Council has taken a creative approach to gain community input into its strategic planning by employing “design thinking” in a novel partnership between Charles Sturt’s Dr Willhemina Wahlin and the local council.

The project, titled “The social is the thing: Taking a designerly approach to the development and evaluation of local government strategic planning”, began in March 2021. It started with a series of workshops run with the Port Macquarie-Hastings Council’s Cultural Steering Group. The workshops taught council officials how to use design thinking, co-design and Harvard University’s “Public Policy Design Arc”.

Dr Wahlin said the goal of the research was to strengthen community engagement. “Local government strategic planning requires extensive community engagement and is pivotal in deciding which resources are distributed to what/whom and how much,” Dr Wahlin said.

“One of the questions we’re asking in this research is whether, by taking this designerly approach to strategic planning, we can also increase the capacity of members of the community to understand the opportunities and constraints that are inevitably involved.”

The cultural plan has since been ratified by council, and the research is included in the official document and appendix.