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Vision 2020: Yarra Ranges' Community Plan

Community Planning is a new field of endevour at some of Victoria's councils but not for Yarra Ranges SHire Council. Together with its local community, the Shire embarked on the writing of its first Vision 2020 Community Plan in 1999. In 2008, the council commenced the third review of the Vision 2020. Much of the work for the review was undertaken in house by the Organisational Development and Strategy team. The council sought the assistance of Twyford Consulting in association with Thorne Partners to provide advice on the community engagement plan and to facilitate the Community Forums and the associated Community Reference Group for the project.

Key features of the Review of the Community Plan were:

1. Two Community Forums. 105 people were invited to attend the Community Forums. This involved a committment to attend two sessions on consecutive Saturdays. Two meetings were seen as important in providing a deliberative element to the project. Information was provided to participatns in booklet form prior to the first session and a number of presentations were made at the first session on these same key issues. Time was given between each speaker for the participant to discuss the material and raise questions for the speakers. People then went away and had a week to "chew over" the issues and to discuss them with their family, friends or community groups. The second meeting involved card storming to identify and cluster the key issues and an open space style small group discussion on each of the key issues. This approach was very different to previous reviews of the plan where small meetings were held in a variety of local areas. This was a major initiative in bringing the whole community together, in terms of a cross section of people representing a wide range of interests.

2. In total 87 participants attended the two sessionsthat were co-facilitated by John Dengate from Twyfords and Kimbra White from Thorne Partners. As with most events there were some last minute apologies. Interestingly, one third of the people in the room were randomly selected. The Council simply had a market research company call people from across the Shire and invited them to attend. The people I spoke to from this group were delighted to have been invited and honoured to be asked to contribute to the future of their Shire. The other two-thirds were either people who answered the advertisements to attend (self-nominated) and the final third were representatives of community groups who had received a direct invitation from the Council. People were not paid to come although they were provided with a petrol voucher and child care was available during the forums. There was a positive vibe in the room, a lot of energy around the discussions and negligible ‘grandstanding’ on specific interests. The idea of randomly inviting people not only had the benefit of finding people who match the demographic of the area, but also provided a diversity of experience into the conversation.

3. Community Reference Group. Council invited about 8 local residents, with a variety of interests to provide advice on the planning for the Community Forum. Kimbra White facilitated all the meetings. The Group met about four times prior to the Forum and once following the Forum to evaluate their contribution to the process. The evaluation showed a number of ways to improve the use of Reference Groups such as starting the process at the begining of the project planning process. Tere were also numerous improvements that the Reference Group was able to provide to the council staff and consultants working on the project.

4. Childrens Theatre. A childrens theatre group attended the first of the Community Forums and worked with a group of about 30 students from local primary schools. They set up in an adjacent venue and worked through out the morning with the children to identify the things they liked and didnot like about living in Yarra Ranges and then to come up with a performance to illustrate their views. They came into the main Forum venue at lunch time and performed for the Forum participants. The performance took one's breath away and touched the heart - saying in actions what is not always put into words - but speaking directly to the issues and to the adult community.

5. Council also undertook a range of other consultation techniques including survey of residents and held workshops with staff, many of whom live in the Shire and have a strong attachment to the future of the Shire.

Reports on the progress of Vision 2020 and the outcomes of all the engagement work including the Community Forum can be found on the Shire's website.