Engaging your community: a guide for Catholic heritage projects

Understanding Community Engagement'Community engagement' is a bit of a buzz word these days.It turns up everywhere from universities, parliament, and the emergency services, to clothing companies, well-known department stores -and of course, in the UK planning applications process.Many Catholic churches, schools, and organisations have community engagement at the heart of their missions: the most well-known in the UK are The Catholic Union of Great Britain and Caritas Social Action Network.But most churches also do community engagement in their everyday activities, and you are likely to already have strong community connections and experience within your parish and your project team.The key is to know how to document, build upon, and develop these experiences so that you can show how your proposed project will have a positive impact on your community.This section will help you to understand what community engagement is, why it's important, and how it is viewed within the heritage sector.