Spectrum with City of Newcastle

Project Objectives

As part of Newcastle City Council’s review of its Community Engagement Strategy, Council wanted to hear directly from the community about their views on engagement, what was done well, what wasn’t done well and how they could improve.

Council wanted to better understand what good community engagement looks like, how the community would like to be engaged, community participation in engagement activities and barriers to effective engagement, communications channels are used to find out about engagement activities, and areas for the City of Newcastle to focus on moving forward.

Our Role

Spectrum Comms was engaged to bring together 100 people from different sectors across the local government area to discuss how Council as part of a community summit. This work included:

• Facilitating a discussion with members of Council’s Access and Inclusion Advisory Committee
• Facilitating an internal workshop with Council staff
• An online survey to seek feedback on CN engagement activities and expressions of interest to participate in the summit
• Working with market and community research specialists Micromex to undertake an expression of interest via an online survey, social media, CN community panel and media releases
• Facilitating a three-hour summit using Mentimeter and group discussions

Outcomes

• 72 people attended the summit
• 181 people completed the survey
• A draft Community Engagement Strategy was being finalised for public exhibition