The Community Voice Method: Using participatory research and filmmaking to foster dialog about changing landscapes

The Community Voice Method is a stakeholder engagement approach designed to foster more inclusive, informed, and ongoing civic dialog in communities without a history of successful planning initiatives. The method begins with an iterative participatory research process, resulting in the creation of an original documentary film compiled from ethnographic interviews with a wide range of stakeholders. The film, which presents a research-based distillation of local civic discourse around the topic of interest, is used in combination with quantitative data presentations to stimulate deliberation during subsequent deliberative public meetings. Using findings from a Community Voice project in Macon County, North Carolina (USA), we argue that, by preceding public meetings with participatory research, the Community Voice Method was able to promote inclusive civic dialog; provide meeting participants with accessible, trustworthy information; and help build ongoing community capacity to address local land use issues.

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► CVM fosters productive dialog where traditional public engagement techniques fail.
► Preceding public engagement with participatory research improves trustworthiness.
► Bringing interview clips into meetings via film yields inclusive, reflective dialog.
► Repeated stakeholder input improves relevance and accessibility of research.