Community groups and local initiatives can benefit from using Urban Rooms as mechanisms to widen participation in their local area and to encourage marginalised and under-represented groups to contribute their knowledge, ideas and experiences. In this way the Urban Room is breaking down the traditional barriers that exist in public involvement in placemaking, offering a space for a much more inclusive, informed and creative level of participation at a grassroots level.

Community groups can bring a vast wealth of knowledge and lived experience to an Urban Room, to share and build on with others. These groups could have a particular focus, for example, heritage, education, diversity, sustainability or ecology. Or they could be more generally interested in a local area, such as neighbourhood forums or residents’ associations. They may focus on engaging people in specific local issues such as the development of a neighbourhood plan, the regeneration of a high street or the development of a local sustainability strategy. Or they may be asking wider questions about longer-term futures of their area.

An Urban Room can create the space for a community group to explore these areas with local people to:

• reveal and recognise the current value (social, physical, cultural, economic) of the local area

• place local issues within a larger regional, national or global context, e.g. levelling up, social inequality, climate emergency, scarcity of resources

• clearly communicate information about local planning policy and development strategies

• form consensus around issues in the local environment and to build coalitions to support, advocate for, or protest against, accordingly
  
  
  For a community group to make the most of their Urban Room they should reach out to under-represented groups and to local decision- makers.