Rethinking Community Meetings

We’ve all been to community meetings that felt like a box-ticking exercise. Long agendas, top-down updates, not much listening.

So we’ve been experimenting with a different approach—one that’s less about reporting back, and more about connecting people who care about the same streets.

In our recent Stonehouse sessions, we tried gathering around themes instead of updates. Fewer presentations, more conversations. And it changed the energy completely.

People spoke who don’t normally speak. Ideas emerged that no one could’ve predicted. As one participant put it: “It felt like we were making something together, not just being talked at.”

We’re still learning, but this feels like a step in the right direction. The future of local decision-making might look more like a workshop than a public meeting.

And if we want more people to feel like they belong in these spaces, we need to keep finding ways to meet that are human, hopeful, and honest.