If we struggle, imagine how the public feel

This is the central tension that doesn’t get talked about enough in our industry. The people planning and delivering community engagement events face the exact same barriers as the people they’re trying to reach. Childcare, working patterns, competing responsibilities – these don’t disappear just because you happen to be on the other side of the display boards.

When we’re trying to set a date for an engagement event, the conversation in the room often involves the client and consultant team quietly negotiating their own diaries and childcare arrangements before we’ve even considered the public. If that’s the reality for the people organising the event, that difficulty is being multiplied across the entire community we’re hoping to reach.

“Being a parent doesn’t define my personality – but it definitely defines my calendar.”

This isn’t a niche problem. For a significant portion of the population, the timing, location and format of a standard engagement event simply doesn’t work. Recognising that internally – honestly, not as a box-ticking exercise – is the first step to designing events that actually reach people.

Timing is everything – rethinking when we engage

The instinct to avoid school holidays for engagement events is understandable, but it’s increasingly outdated – at least when it comes to half terms. During the shorter breaks, people tend to stay local. Routines are relaxed. The community is actually present in a way it often isn’t on a wet Tuesday evening in November.

Our team has seen this work at Chrisp Street Market, where we ran a co-design event during October school half term. We had a face painter in the room, free coffee and the numbers that came through the door were genuinely phenomenal – people we simply wouldn’t have reached any other way. The community was buzzing with people, the market was busy, and families who were already out and about just wandered in. Summer holidays are a different story. Families are away, schedules are unpredictable, and – let’s be honest – the team needs a break too. That’s a legitimate consideration, not an excuse.

Weekday evenings still have their place, particularly for reaching people who work weekends. But they don’t need to be exhausting marathon sessions. A team that’s been on their feet all day is not going to be at their best for hour eight, and neither are the people attending after a long day at work. Keep them focussed, keep them time-limited, and they can still be genuinely productive.

Then there’s the online evening session – the 6 or 7pm webinar that looks accessible on paper. In practice, if you have children at home who need feeding, bathing and putting to bed, that window is one of the hardest parts of the day to give to an event. It’s worth questioning whether this format is as inclusive as it appears.

There’s also a group we sometimes design events around without realising it – what you might call the ‘time rich’. These are the people who will come regardless of when or where an event is held. Good engagement isn’t about designing it for them. It’s about thinking harder to reach everyone else. And that’s exactly what JTP Engages.

Creating spaces where families can actually attend

One of the best engagement events I’ve attended – as a member of the public rather than a JTP Community Planner – was held in a church on a Saturday morning. I went with my daughter. There were colouring pens and drawing activities set up for children, which meant she was engaged and I was free to look properly at the proposals and have a real conversation with the team.

That’s not a small detail. That’s the difference between a parent attending meaningfully and not attending at all. And it applies to every event JTP runs: what is there for children to do? Because nine times out of ten, if you’re a parent and you walk past somewhere with something for your kids, you’re going in. And if there’s something in it for you too – a conversation worth having, an event worth your time, a free coffee whilst looking at design proposals – then you’ll stay.

The atmosphere matters more than people give it credit for. Coffee, cakes, music, face painting, lego building blocks – these things signal to people that they are genuinely welcome, not just tolerated. We actually had people at our engagement event at Lewisham Retail Park comment that it was the best coffee they had ever had at a consultation event. That’s a small thing, but it’s the kind of small thing that makes someone linger, look around and end up in a proper conversation about the proposals.

“You can see people walking by, looking in – and then coming in. Those activities get the people who are just passing.”

Even a 20-minute visit from a family is a meaningful interaction. The goal isn’t to keep people for three hours – it’s to make it easy enough to come in and welcoming enough that they want to.

There’s a particular kind of pride that comes from seeing a family walk through the door at one of our events – the children getting involved with activities, the parents having a genuine conversation about what’s being proposed. It doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because someone thought carefully about what the space needed to feel like.

Variety: not everyone engages the same way

Different people want different things from an engagement event – and different things on different days depending on how much time they have. Some people want to sit down with architects and sketch ideas together. Some prefer technology: VR tools, AI-assisted design, interactive maps. Some want to complete a detailed comment form, either at the event or at home in their own time. And some people just want to stick a post-it note on a board and move on.

Offering that variety isn’t just good practice – it removes barriers. If there’s only one way to engage, you have already excluded people who don’t fit that format. At JTP, we think about this as a menu rather than a fixed programme: we start from a range of proven approaches and following our demographics research and initial conversations with local stakeholders and residents, then ask what else might work for this specific community and site.

At Chrisp Street Market, for example, we were able to plug into existing local events – two Summer Saturdays with market traders, facepainting, live music, a roving flowerpot, free pizza, craft workshops or a Winter Festival featuring a Santa’s Grotto and Christmas Lights switch-on. Rather than asking people to come to us, we went to where they already were. In other places it might be a Farmer’s Market or Village Fete but ultimately JTP Engages understands the importance of being present and active in familiar community contexts and places. That’s a mindset shift that makes a real difference.

Digital tools play a different but equally important role. Online platforms, interactive maps and consultation websites can be updated and engaged with at any time – 10pm on a Tuesday when the children are finally in bed is a perfectly valid moment to give feedback, and for many people it’s the only moment available. This isn’t a replacement for in-person engagement, but it significantly extends the reach and respects that people’s available time is fragmented. These assets are an integral part of JTP Engages and a selection of our bespoke digital tools can be viewed here –  https://jtpengages.co.uk/

Social media is increasingly part of this too. We now tabulate and include social media comments as part of the formal feedback – because if someone takes the time to post a comment, even a critical one, that’s a genuine contribution to the process. At Chrisp Street Market, our social media reels garnered over 100,000 social-media views. They were targeted, they were fun and they reached the exact people we wanted to see at our engagement events.

Why any of this matters?

 There are projects where the constraints are so fixed that the scope for meaningful co-design is genuinely limited – and in those cases, a clear, honest exhibition is probably the right tool. But where there is genuine scope for people to shape what gets built, the quality and legitimacy of the outcome depend entirely on who was in the room.

The communities that are hardest to reach are often the ones whose input matters most. Younger people, working families, people with caring responsibilities – these are the groups who will live with the consequences of planning decisions for decades. Leaving barriers in place isn’t neutral. It’s a choice, and it has consequences.

To clients who are still hesitant about family-friendly formats or Saturday events – who might see coffee and crayons as a distraction from ‘serious’ consultation – the response is straightforward: JTP has been on the frontline of these processes for 30 years, and we know that bringing people in early and meaningfully, even when a site is controversial, almost always leads to better and richer outcomes. You can find common ground. You can educate people about the planning process in a way that has genuine social value for the community and project. But only if they actually show up.

“Give options and flexibility – that’s the key. For us working, and for the people coming to our events.”

Remove the barriers. Make it accessible. Make it welcoming. Make it easy. And if you’re not sure where to start, ask yourself if someone rushing from childcare or work could realistically make it through your door.

If the answer is no – modify the event.

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It occurred to me in the process of writing this piece that I started drafting it on the train to work and marked it up on the train home. The narrative wrote itself in the gaps between other things –exactly the kind of flexible, in-between time that so many working parents know well. If engagement can happen here, it can happen anywhere.

1. For Government, Local Authorities and other policy makers

When the same voices keep showing up to consultation events, planning decisions reflect habit rather than a reflection of the true community. The families, young residents and children who will live with those planning decisions for decades to come deserve a process designed around their lives and that is exactly what JTP offers.

2. For organisations seeking inclusive engagement

Inclusion that stops at the venue door isn’t inclusion. JTP Engages rethinks the when, the where and the what of community engagement. This piece demonstrates how rethinking the basics can reach the people who matter most but are often the hardest groups to engage.

3. For clients commissioning new places

Better engagement produces better outcomes – smoother planning processes, richer insights and communities that feel genuinely heard. JTP Engages and our processes understand human behaviour and that is how we make sure the right people are in the room.

4. For ESG Leaders and influencers

Social value is only meaningful if it reaches the people who need it most. It shouldn’t just be measured by a metric. Thoughtful engagement design – the kind that considers timing, atmosphere and real-world barriers – is one of the most direct ways to ensure your commitments translate into genuine community impact. And through JTP Engages this is what we’re always trying to achieve.

5. For Urban Planners and Designers

 The brief you work to is only as good as the conversations that shaped it. JTP Engages goes beyond standard consultation formats to capture the perspectives of communities who often struggle to make it through the door – and that intelligence ultimately makes for better designs and placemaking.