Re-energising Tenant Engagement: Innovation, Creativity and the New Participation Wave
Wednesday 26th of November 2025
Re-energising Tenant Engagement: Innovation, Creativity and the New Participation Wave
During the recent involvement week I was honoured to host a webinar on new methods of engagement. From the large numbers attending and the enthusiasm shown demonstrated that an appetite for something new was in the air.
Tenant engagement in social housing is entering a critical moment. While traditional methods such as surveys, forums and scrutiny panels have a role, they often engage only a limited number of participants. Many tenants are disengaged not because they lack interest, but because the existing tools and settings simply do not speak to them.
The sector now has an opportunity to rethink what engagement can look like. Alternative approaches such as arts-based engagement, digital participation tools like Polis and Decidim, and deliberative forms of engagement are not simply “add-ons”. They signal a shift in mindset: from consultation to collaboration, from speaking for tenants to working with them.
Arts-Based Engagement – Creativity as Participation
Arts-based engagement opens participation to people who may not feel confident speaking in meetings or responding to consultation documents. It offers ways for tenants to express experiences, emotions and priorities in non-verbal, visual or narrative formats.
Examples include community murals that reflect shared hopes and concerns, storytelling workshops where residents’ lived experience becomes evidence for change, photography projects that reveal unseen housing conditions, or theatre-based roleplay used to explore how different policies affect real lives.
The value of these methods lies in their ability to:
· Reach underrepresented voices.
· Capture emotional insight alongside factual data.
· Build confidence and connection between tenants.
· Generate evidence that is memorable and compelling.
Arts-based methods also deepen understanding. Issues like damp, overcrowding, isolation or feeling unsafe can be explored in a more human, tangible and empathetic way than traditional surveys ever allow.
Digital Tools – Broadening Access and Visibility
The rise of digital participation platforms offers landlords and tenant organisations new ways to expand engagement beyond those who attend physical meetings. Two tools in particular illustrate this potential:
Polis is a real-time opinion mapping platform. Participants respond to statements and can add their own. The system analyses responses to show areas of consensus and disagreement across a group. It surfaces shared priorities, rather than just loud opinions, and helps to shape decisions around collective patterns rather than individual narratives.
Decidim is an open-source platform being used globally for participatory democracy. It enables idea generation, collaborative proposal development, participatory budgeting, voting and follow-up transparency. Crucially, it makes the outcomes of engagement visible. Tenants can see what decisions were made and what progress is being monitored — which increases trust and accountability.
Digital tools also support inclusion. Tenants who might never attend a formal meeting due to time, confidence, caring responsibilities or poor prior experiences may contribute readily online, in their own time. Digital engagement widens participation and helps the sector listen differently and at scale.
Participatory and Deliberative Engagement – Depth and Shared Decision Making
Alongside broader access, there is a growing appetite for more meaningful decision-making with tenants. Participatory and deliberative approaches such as tenant juries, mini-publics or facilitated policy panels allow residents to explore complex issues with time, information and expert input.
These processes shift engagement from asking “What do tenants think?” to exploring “What could tenants recommend if they had equal access to information and space to reflect together?”
Deliberation brings:
· Informed discussion
· Shared learning
· Diverse perspectives in structured dialogue
· Collective decision-making rather than individual opinion sharing
It moves engagement beyond feedback and into the realm of insight and co-design.
Blending Methods – A New Model for Engagement
Innovation in tenant engagement should not mean abandoning existing practice, but enhancing it by combining methods that speak to different needs and voices.
For example:
· Arts-based engagement could reveal personal and community experiences.
· Polis could surface wider consensus.
· A deliberative panel could develop recommendations based on that insight.
· Decidim could track decisions and provide transparency.
· A tenant forum or scrutiny group could then monitor progress.
This creates a pathway from experience, to insight, to influence, to accountability.
A Call for Change – Skills, Trust and Culture
To unlock the potential of innovative engagement, the sector will need to invest in facilitation skills, digital literacy, co-design processes and community capacity building. Technology is not a solution on its own. The challenge and opportunity lie in reshaping the relationship between tenants and landlords.
Tenants must be seen not simply as consultees but as partners in shaping decisions. Engagement needs to be more visible, more responsive and more trusting. And crucially, the outcomes of engagement must be clear and trackable otherwise innovation risks becoming novelty.
Looking Ahead
The future of tenant engagement lies in creativity, inclusion, transparency and shared influence. When these elements combine, engagement can move beyond process into purpose. Tenants do not just contribute they shape decisions and lead change.
This is not about replacing what exists. It is about opening more doors, listening differently and co-producing better outcomes. Social housing has an opportunity to re-energise engagement and rebuild trust not just through more meetings, but through more meaningful participation.
Useful links and resources
Decidim – participatory democracy platform https://decidim.org
Pol.is – consensus mapping and real-time opinion analysis https://pol.is
Competence Centre on Participatory & Deliberative Democracy (European Commission) https://cop-demos.jrc.ec.europa.eu
Methodological Toolkits (CoP-DEMOS) https://cop-demos.jrc.ec.europa.eu/citizen-engagement-organisations/methodological-toolkits
EUARENAS Toolbox – participatory innovation in European cities https://euarenas-toolbox.eu
Participatory Methods Toolkit (King Baudouin Foundation & viWTA) https://www.regione.toscana.it/documents/10180/1393902/Deliberative_polling_materialiappr.pdf/d848c747-9371-4339-b058-f08818def206
Council of Europe – Participatory Democracy Resources https://www.coe.int/en/web/participatory-democracy
DIYW Toolkit – for youth engagement & democratic innovation https://www.democracyandyouth.eu/about/en
Local Authorities Participation Toolkit (ALDA) https://www.alda-europe.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/D4.1-TOOLKIT-FOR-LOCAL-AUTHORITIES.pdf
Arts-Based Engagement Resources
· ArtWorks Alliance – Participatory Arts as a Community of Practice https://artworksalliance.uk/participatory-arts-as-community-of-practice/ (A community of practitioners working in participatory arts — useful for case studies, methodology, networks.)
· Baring Foundation – Report: Arts & Social Housing https://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/3690/1/BARING-FINAL-harriss.pdf (In-depth report on how arts projects operate in social housing, funding models, and impact.)
· Supporting Community Arts Through Planning (Toolkit) https://www.social-life.co/media/files/Supporting_community_arts_through_planning.pdf (Good-practice guide for local authorities on using planning/developer contributions to support participatory arts in communities.) social-life.co
· Pan Intercultural Arts https://www.pan-arts.net (UK-based charity using drama, dance, writing and other art forms to build community, especially with marginalised groups.)