Future Festivals
Entered by: City of Williamsburg
Every two years, the City of Williamsburg, Virginia gathers public input as part of its strategic planning process, called Goals, Initiatives, and Outcomes (GIO).
Due to COVID restrictions, the last time the City hosted in-person public input sessions for its GIO process was in 2018. That year, only about 50 residents — many of whom are familiar faces at City meetings — attended two sessions held in meeting rooms at a central location of the City. Those input sessions took place in the meeting room of a City building located in the downtown area and used a typical format to solicit the input - a prepared presentation of project ideas, followed by a facilitated conversation on suggested strategies.
While the input was valuable, City leaders wanted the strategic planning process to have a wider reach so that more diverse audiences and opinions could be considered.
In the Fall of 2022, the City of Williamsburg hosted a series of public input sessions called Future Festivals. Attendees played larger-than-life games designed to gather feedback that would inform the development of the City's two-year workplan, known as the Goals, Initiatives, and Outcomes (GIO) document.
With this new approach, the main KPI was attendance. The goal was not simply to surpass the number of people, approximately 50, who attended the previous in-person public input process but to grow attendance exponentially and attract a more diverse audience to produce a strategic plan that better reflects the community.
The City hosted eight Future Festivals, six strategically located in different areas around the City and two on the William & Mary campus. Residents offered input through six games, each related to one of six goal areas identified in the City's Vision Statement. The events also featured lawn games, prizes, music, a colouring station, a video booth, and free food, creating a vibrant festival atmosphere.
To encourage Future Festival attendance in 2022, the City implemented an extensive communication plan through news releases; video promotions; and recurring and varied social media promotions before, during, and after events on all social media channels.
Though the Future Festival concept was conceived during the pandemic, City of Williamsburg leadership and staff spent the summer of 2022 constructing the larger-than-life games and writing the questions/themes for each game. The Future Festival format was conceptualized, constructed, and implemented completely in-house. In August 2022, the communications campaign to promote the Future Festivals began with a news release, social media push, and webpage. In the days before the first Future Festival on Aug. 22, 2022, Williamsburg Police officers hand-delivered fliers to the homes in neighbourhoods surrounding the City park where the initial event took place.
From late August 2022 through until early October 2022, in addition to images, videos and reels continually promoted on City social media channels, the City of Williamsburg communications staff produced a promotional video to promote the seven additional events that would take place over approximately seven weeks.
After the Future Festivals concluded, City staff reviewed and analysed the input to create a digestible presentation for City Council at the biennial strategic planning retreat. City Council provided staff with direction on initiatives for inclusion in the 2023-2024 Goals, Initiatives, and Outcomes document & City Council approved the Goals, Initiatives, and Outcomes document.
To conclude the strategic planning process, City Council unveiled the final document’s contents in its State of the City event. While the event is open to any member of the public, Future Festival attendees received special invitations in the mail. Lesson Learned: The City of Williamsburg was unprepared for its own success. With more than 900 attendees playing games – some that featured open-ended questions – the analysis of the input was more difficult than anticipated. In the next cycle, the City plans to have a more systematic method in place ahead of the Future Festivals to ease the analysis process.
By hosting eight Future Festivals over seven weeks in different locations around the City of Williamsburg and offering a festival atmosphere that was fun and family friendly, the City received input from 923 attendees. In addition, an online survey that ran during the same timeline garnered 708 respondents. The specific and measurable input provided through the Future Festival's larger-than-life games directly affected the development of the City's goals and initiatives for 2023-2024.
Several initiatives that made it into the final document can be tied directly to resident feedback at Future Festivals, such as substantial changes to public transportation, a reimagining of public education, and more public restrooms – three areas that likely would not have received as much attention or specificity without the Future Festivals.
Because of this new approach to public input, the community and City government are more aligned in their vision for the future of Williamsburg. Residents are more engaged and more empowered to voice their opinions with a confidence that they will be heard. The success of the City of Williamsburg’s Future Festivals is clear, and staff is already brainstorming games and themes for the strategic planning process that is scheduled for the Fall of 2024.
Want to lift the hood on the City of Williamsburg? Download the Citizen Engagement Toolkit to access the tools and resources they used to bring the Future Festivals to life, and to learn from more best practice citizen engagement strategies.
