There is a version of public consultation that technically works but doesn’t achieve its real objectives. The notice goes up on the council website. The exhibition boards appear in the library for three weeks. A survey is published online. The statutory boxes are ticked. But the community, the people who will actually live alongside this development for decades, remains largely unmoved, uninformed, and unconvinced.
For projects like this, pushback from the public can become the ultimate, sometimes devastating, conclusion. For such projects, disaffection from the community can completely derail the whole enterprise.
The problem isn’t usually a lack of information. It’s a lack of story.
Information tells people what is happening. Story makes them care about it. |
This distinction matters enormously in the context of regeneration and community development. A planning document can describe a scheme in precise technical detail: the number of homes, the height of the buildings, the phasing plan, the transport links. What it rarely does is answer the questions that communities actually need answered: What will this feel like to live next to? What will my street look like in five years? What does this mean for the people who already live here? Is there a place for me in the future being planned?
These are not technical questions. They are human ones. And they require a different kind of communication, one that uses narrative to create emotional understanding rather than purely rational comprehension.
What storytelling actually means in this context
Storytelling isn’t spin. It isn’t glossy visualisations or optimistic artist’s impressions that bear no relation to what gets built. In fact, communities have become increasingly sceptical of that kind of communication, and rightly so. What storytelling means, used properly in public engagement, is giving a development project a narrative arc, with key emotionally relevant points, that people can follow and participate in, a beginning, a middle, and an end, with the community as part of the story rather than an audience watching from outside.
That arc begins before planning applications are submitted. It starts with the existing place, its history, its current character, the things that matter to the people who live and work there. A regeneration story that begins with what’s already valued, before it talks about what will change, builds the kind of trust that a consultation document never can.
The middle of the story is where most engagement fails. Once planning permission is granted, many developers and local authorities consider the consultation phase closed. But for communities, the story is only just beginning. Because now the disruption starts. Demolition, construction, phasing, delays, noise, dust, changed routes and closed shops. This is the period when communities most need to understand what’s happening and why, when their questions are most urgent and their tolerance most under strain.
The consultation phase often ends when planning permission is granted. For communities, the story is only just beginning. |
The end of the story (the delivered scheme, the new homes, the regenerated high street, the community spaces) is what developers and local authorities focus their communications on. But it’s only credible if the middle has been handled well. Communities that have been kept informed and genuinely involved throughout are far more likely to feel ownership of the finished place than those who were consulted once, ignored during construction, and then presented with a fait accompli.
Story as a strategic tool
At Gazooky Studios, we came to public engagement from a background in storytelling: in film, immersive experience, and location-based narrative. What we’ve found is that the principles that make a story work in those contexts apply directly to community engagement. Establish the world. Introduce the stakes. Develop the story in emotional terms, not just the bare facts. Make the audience care about what happens next. Invite them to play a role.
The difference is the medium. And the medium, in this context, is place itself.
In the next article in this series, we’ll explore how telling that story in the actual location where it’s set (rather than in a meeting room or on a website), transforms the quality and reach of community engagement.
On site storytelling