A great engagement strategy often shifts between different types of participation - blending offline, online and digital engagement. Whether it's a public meeting at City Hall, or an online videoconferencing workshop, you can also use CitizenLab’s Events feature to display, manage, and publicize both past and upcoming events all on your platform.
Setting up your event
For each project that you've created, you can easily add events. Just go to the 'Project Settings' > 'Events' tab
With fields for titles, descriptions, images, location options (including hybrid events), attachments, and more, you craft detailed event pages in no time. This customization ensures your event page gives your audience all of the information they need to engage actively!
Planning a one-day event? Our platform supports one-day-long project phases, giving you more flexibility in event scheduling and how you represent that project phase.
Displaying events
The events from all of your projects are compiled into a single Events Page:
This Events Page can be viewed by:
adding "/events" to the end of your platform's web address
by adding this Events Page to your navigation bar. You can enable this setting in your admin interface: "Pages & menu" > "Add to navbar" next to "Events".
2. When you've added an event to your project, it displays by default at the bottom of the project page. Phase-relevant events will also display within the phase description.
3. You can also display three upcoming events on your homepage using our Events Widget, which is available on our Standard and Premium plans.
Similar to the Events Page, the widget can also be enabled in your admin interface: "Pages & Menu" > "Edit" next to "Home" > you can edit the "Events" section of the page at the bottom.
Integrated event sign-up
Gone are the days of cumbersome registration processes. Our intuitive sign-up feature streamlines your workflow by integrating sign-up capabilities directly into your engagement platform, eliminating the need for external tools to manage event registrations and tracking. This makes it easier for community members to join your events, increasing participation and engagement.
Attendee Management and Communication:
In addition to having users sign up for your events, you will be able to email them directly without leaving the platform, whether it is to share with them materials and context in preparation for the event, or to follow up after it with additional engagement opportunities. You will be able to do this by:
Creating a smart group of the attendees and using our messaging tool to email them.
Attendees will receive both an event sign up confirmation email, as well as a reminder 24 hours before the event starts.
As an admin, you can then export your event attendees list directly from the back end
Event ideas for local governments
Ready to host your own event and increase community engagement? We’ve put together a list of the most popular event types and included a few success stories to inspire you. Consider hosting:
Kick-off events to raise awareness about a new project and invite as many people as possible to participate. Even if you don’t have a new kick-off, use it as an opportunity to create buzz about an ongoing project - you’ll celebrate those who have already engaged while attracting new participants, too.
Relationship and trust-building events, such as drop-in meet-and-greets for residents to meet Council members, bring up ideas, and share concerns.
Information-sharing events, such as neighborhood-specific meetings that give the community a chance to ask questions and share ideas before engaging in an important project, like a comprehensive plan or participatory budget.
Project-site events, to get specific feedback on urban planning or public space projects, such as involving parents and children in a discussion on the construction of a playground.
Reveal events, to share the results of a project, such as unveiling the final design or celebrating the finalization of an urban planning project, or announcing the winners of a community competition
Pop-up events, to generate buzz around engaging in a project or to share information - or both! The City of Copenhagen did this recently for the Proposals project by hosting a pop-up at a metro station where they had information about their project ready for parents of young children, a group they wanted to engage more in their efforts.
Educational workshops, with city leaders who help residents better understand city operations or projects.
Offline voting events, so that you can take a blended engagement approach to your voting projects. And not to worry, you can easily upload the offline votes to your platform to process the final results.
Do you have further questions or need help? Contact our Support Team via the chat bubble. 💬