Creative Instigation: The Art & Strategy of Authentic Community Engagement

Exploring creative responses to community challenges

Creative Instigation is a collection of in-depth case stories focused on effective and innovative community engagement and policymaking in diverse cities across the western U.S. Each story reflects the history and uniqueness of the community, organization, or institution--providing grit to the importance of context to understand the why and the how of this work. It includes the successes and challenges, and the efforts needed to do this work well. Unlike ＂typical engagement,＂ where meetings are announced via limited venues with limited information, Creative Instigation describes engagement that is authentic, outreach that is expansive, and research that uncovers the soul of a community. No two approaches are alike.

This book is for those most likely to be responsible for community engagement work--city staff and elected leadership, community developers and nonprofit workers, architecture and planning students, scholars, and community activists, as well as people who care about their own community and the future of their city. The in-depth stories of multi-year efforts by organizations, institutions, and communities, working differently, and at times at cross purposes describe the unique, transdisciplinary skills required to bring these sectors together to solve shared problems.

Fern Tiger, through her firm Fern Tiger Associates, has facilitated scores of projects to engage communities in solving controversial issues. Her strategic work with organizations, institutions, and public agencies in California as well as in Washington, Hawaii, Arizona, and other parts of the U.S. has helped people overcome inequities, power gaps, and other complex problems in their communities. Her innovative approaches combine the creative, intuitive tools of the artist/designer with the practical, systemic tools of urban planners. Tiger is former Professor, University of Washington Tacoma, Urban Studies Program; Graduate faculty,
Community Planning; and former Professor of Practice, College of Public Programs, Arizona State University.