Writing
Courtesy of CDX, 2008
Putting ideas into words, analysing complex and inter-related issues and explaining how to carry out activities can be very tricky to get just right. changes has been writing about such topics for over 20 years – for our own clients and for the general public.
We write things like:
- Reports (Women Take Part)
- Journal articles (Community Development Journal)
- Guides (Voice Handy Guide and echo ‘how to’ guide – see ‘resources’)
- Information papers (Getting to Grips with Community Empowerment – see ‘resources’)
- Frameworks (Take Part Learning Framework)
- News-sheets (changes News)
- Training materials
- Toolkits (Facilitation toolkit – see ‘resources’)
- Books
- Book reviews
- Research papers
A lot of our work is around concepts that are often confusing and which defy simple classification: community empowerment, community engagement, community involvement, community development, active citizenship; consultation, involvement, participation, engagement. We disentangle and make sense of these concepts so they can be used appropriately and in ways which help rather than hinder.
We write in ways which make sense to people; we avoid jargon where possible, aim for short and simple explanations and use formats which make reading easy to follow.
Clearly, writing for an academic audience is a very different process to more chatty and informal types of writing. We do write differently depending on the primary audience for our work, but we always keep things as straight-forward as possible. We aim to simplify not complicate!!