Consultation

In the Beginning

Getting the project started can be both the easiest and hardest part of the process; the easiest because you've had a fantastic idea and are full of enthusiasm; the hardest because sometimes it's difficult to know where to start to turn the idea into reality.

One of the first things you need to do is to is to formulate clear ideas about what you want to achieve. Often writing or sketching your idea will help to clarify what you want to do.
Stay focussed and try to develop goals for the project so that everyone knows when the project has achieved what it set out to do. This may sound strange but often when projects get underway they grow and develop so it's important to keep in mind what you were originally trying to do. This is especially important if you have to complete specific steps before you can claim your funding. Click here to see examples of some great projects in Lancashire.

Consultation

The next step is to find support for your idea. It doesn't matter if the idea comes from one person or a group; the important thing is to share it. This can be with your neighbours or local groups whom you think can help. Consultation is an essential part of any project as most grant bodies will want some assurance that your project is supported by most of the local community. People you should consider consulting include:

Consultation can seem complicated but at its most basic it is making sure that everyone has had the opportunity to learn about the project, comment on the idea and know that their comments have been listened to, even if it's not possible to act on them.

How you go about consulting your local community can vary from a public meeting or a questionnaire, surveying your community to a setting up a largescale plan or model where everyone can set out their ideas. Choose the method that you think is most suitable for your project. Don't be afraid to be inventive or to use methods that you know will work - maybe more people will turn up to a display and take part in a discussion if you offer a buffet or perhaps local school children can design and carry out questionnaires as part of a lesson project.

Do discuss what you will do if there is no support for your idea. Will a few changes gain that support? Is there a more suitable site for the project? Try not to dismiss other peoples' ideas because they don't appear to fit your original idea, with a bit of tweaking they might make your project stronger. Your project might change quite dramatically at this stage; this doesn't mean your idea wasn't any good or that it was wrong - it's just that project ideas do tend to develop and change as they go along and as different issues crop up.

You'll be talking to a lot of people so this is an ideal time to start researching information that might be useful to your projects. You might want to consider the following questions:

Finally and most importantly remember to share the project workload. One person can't do everything and that isn't really what community projects are about. If one person tries to do it all then they'll just end up exhausted and then the project will be become vulnerable to failing. Try to distribute the workload as evenly as possible, everyone should have the opportunity to become involved and take responsibility for part of the project and this allows you to take advantage of peoples skills and interests to progress your idea.