Community engagement is the process of public participation and involvement that promotes relationship building through learning, action, and the expression of needs and values. Community engagement can bring vibrancy and innovation to planning practice by strengthening the degree of public commitment to planning processes and making more perspectives available to decision makers. Planners and community leaders already promote engagement through a variety of traditional tools, including public surveys, visioning workshops, town halls, meetings, and public hearings. Increasingly, however, planners and community leaders are using new, creative tools as well as traditional ones.

Creative tools for community engagement include innovative visual-art techniques, storytelling, social-networking technology, exhibits, music, performance, festivals, and community gatherings. When planners use these tools, it can indicate that they are receptive to feedback, genuine in their acknowledgment of others’ viewpoints, and committed to making participation and the development of relationships as easy as possible.

This is one of several briefing papers created by the APA's Planning and Community Health Research Center on how planners use arts and culture to achieve economic, social, environmental, and community goals.