Poplar HARCA
Workshops and facilitation / Resident engagement / Strategy
Project:
Resident engagement strategy
Client:
Poplar HARCA
Poplar HARCA is an award-winning Housing and Regeneration Community Association in east London. The organisation owns and manages more than 10,000 homes and is leading a £2.5bn place-shaping programme with significant annual investment in community regeneration.
The housing association invited residents to join a new community panel in late 2022. Six residents were recruited to learn and explore best practice in resident engagement and to make recommendations to Poplar HARCA’s board for a new resident engagement strategy.
weave was appointed to support the community panel to develop and cocreate their strategic recommendations for resident engagement at the east London housing association in 2023.
We worked with Poplar HARCA residents to develop their independent recommendations for resident engagement, and designed and facilitated a series of creative workshops.
weave supported the community panel to:
develop a resident engagement vision statement
recommend high-level strategic themes and objectives to inform the resident engagement strategy and,
identify a suite of success measures and performance indicators
Once the strategy was agreed, we worked with the panel to write up their strategic recommendations and evidence their work.
The panel presented their recommendations for resident engagement to Poplar HARCA’s board in July 2023 and their strategy and recommendations were approved in July 2023.
Resident members of the panel presented their work at a European housing conference in Darmstadt, Germany and in the Best Practice Library of Eurhonet - the European Housing Network.
“Thank you for doing an amazing job. There were times before we approached you where the task looked impossible to complete. You have made it easier and a pleasant wrap up to an exciting project.
We worked with Sarah to run a number of sessions with a diverse group of residents on our Community Panel to transform their research, knowledge and lived experiences into a strategic resident engagement strategy for our Board.
Sarah understood our brief and goals, adapted to our approach with residents and delivered high quality documents which capture the voice of our Community Panel.
It was a pleasure working with Sarah on this project and we’re looking forward to working with weave again.”
