Abstract
I’ve been working as a social planning consultant since 1981. Back in 1990, working in Melbourne, I found myself with the perfect client with the perfect project that allowed my firm and professional colleagues to explore the potential of video in community engagement. On a windswept site in suburban Melbourne called Timbarra, we designed and managed a workshop for new residents of a private housing development. The client was the Urban Land Authority (ULA), the State land developer in Victoria. The project manager was community artist and activist, Graeme Dunstan. We called our workshop “A Welcome Home” – a conscious play on words. This participatory design workshop was intended to assist participants in making decisions about their house design and siting, in consultation with their neighbours and expert advisers. A complementary aim was to introduce them to local community services and facilities and to plant the seeds of the community development process for the new housing estate. We were welcoming people who had recently purchased a residential lot and we wanted them to feel at home, as they negotiated with their neighbours to make decisions about siting their houses on their lots.
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Sarkissian, W. (2010). "The Beginning of Something": Using Video as a Tool in Community Engagement. In: Sandercock, L., Attili, G. (eds) Multimedia Explorations in Urban Policy and Planning. Urban and Landscape Perspectives, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3209-6_8
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