Looking for a highly experienced person to help with social and community planning issues?

 

I could be the person you are looking for.

 

In the pages that follow, I summarise the range of consulting services I offer: housing, community engagement, social planning, placemaking, keynote addresses and workshops and training.

 

I have worked as a social planning consultant for over thirty years and as an academic and author for many years as well.

 

I have a wide background, experience and education.

 

While I am a specialist in several areas, I also have generalist knowledge.

 

So it’s often difficult to pigeonhole or precisely categorise my offerings and my skills and expertise.

 

 

MY SERVICES

 

HI, I’m Wendy Sarkissian, author, community planner and engagement practitioner.

 

I am passionate about helping people create processes and places that are inspirations for our future.   I provide expert social planning and design advice.

 

We all  enjoy inspired places in our communities.

 

And  everyone can benefit from visionary and inspirational processes to help design and  create them.

 

Have you found that planning and creating great community spaces and involving people in decisions about them are a far cry from what you expected?

If you want  inspired places in your community and successful engagement processes that bring people on board, you’re in the right place.

Inspirational Processes

 

Do you feel you  could be more successful  in  the processes you use to  engage local  people  about those places?

 

Successful community engagement processes can be critical to a projects success.

 

The right tools

But without the right experience, skills, tools and support, it’s easy for things to go off course. And getting it wrong can be painful and costly.

 

The good news is – I can help you get it right.

 

You can design  inspirational  engagement processes to achieve those results  –  including engagement about strategies and  policies, as well as  for physical  plans and designs.

 

I can help  you design  inspirational  community  engagement  processes with clear  guidelines  and checklists that  make it very easy to deliver successful  engagement  processes.

 

And I can help you evaluate the success of  your  processes –  from  the  participants’ perspectives.

 

Facilitation help

I can also facilitate successful engagement processes for you.

My processes can help you  design places that meet people’s needs – in direct and accountable ways.

 

You can  develop your own  tailor-made  checklists, manuals and engagement programs.

 

You can access  many  excellent  practical advisory materials.   Most  are completely free.

 

Inspired Places

 

Because you’re good at what you do, you want to create inspirational  places in your community –  parks, public places,  streets, malls, squares, plazas, playgrounds  and  housing – that  fit the needs of the people who use them.

 

A bad fit?

Perhaps you’re familiar with some  public  place or housing that is  architecturally  interesting …  but  it just doesn’t  “fit”  the needs of local  people who use it.

 

After it’s built, it’s is usually too late to fix design details that  are  just not functional. They end up being annoying to users … or very costly.

 

Sometimes, housing proposals elicit NIMBY responses. And if we don’t find out more about NIMBY psychology, things can get messy very quickly.

 

But it doesn’t have to be that way.   You can create inspirational public places or housing that users will love. And even rave about.

 

You can also create community engagement processes that help the development of housing that really matters to people — residents and neighbours alike — using my innovative the Homing Instinct approaches.

 

I can help you develop  planning and  design briefs to make sure that your  places  meet the needs of identified users and user groups so   you can develop places that work.

 

Planning and Design Guidelines

 

If you’re after specific design guidelines for your planning project so you can create a place that is culturally appropriate, sustainable, suitable for all ages — and that really ‘fits’ the needs of those who will use it, then contact me directly: [email protected]

 

 

Please contact me if I can help you in any way.

 

Email: [email protected]