Revisiting Masterplans we helped shape: Where are they now?

As community engagement practitioners, we're often deeply involved in the early stages of a project before moving on to the next. What we rarely get to do is return once the work is complete—to observe, to listen, and to feel the results of the process we helped shape.

Revisiting old haunts gives us perspective: what worked, what we would change, and how community voices echo in the "finished" (for now) space. Too often, community engagement is overlooked during and post project delivery, which means we miss valuable opportunities for community-based evaluation and learning.

Our team recently returned to the sites where Conversation Co supported the community engagement processes. We wanted to see: Did the vision hold? How is the community using the space? What lessons can we carry forward?

Read on for insights about the projects we helped shape, what the community envisioned back then, and what has changed now since the engagement.