Primary Purpose
Description
Charettes are collaborative meetings where project stakeholders attempt to resolve conflicts and draft solutions to a design/planning problem. Charettes are participatory planning processes that emphasize involving as many stakeholders as possible as early as possible in short, intensive meetings. Stakeholders work together with subject matter experts and design/planning professionals to uncover potential problems, identify and discuss solutions, and create an actionable plan. The diverse backgrounds of participants allow for broad discussion of issues, interrelationships, and impacts. Participants work across disciplines and organizational boundaries to achieve a shared vision and create holistic solutions. Charettes are useful because they are problem-oriented, produce visible results, and increase the degree of public involvement. Because charettes are typically short in duration, their tight timelines facilitate resolution.
Charettes can be structured in a variety of ways, but often involve stages:
- Information gathering;
- Collaborative design; and
- Proposal of a plan or design.
In order to be successful, charettes require outreach to build the interest and involvement of stakeholders. They also require a skilled design or planning team that can listen to input, make ideas feasible, and not insert their own perspectives and ideas too much.
Outcomes
Charettes can produce a collaborative solution or design with a high degree of transparency for stakeholders.
Time considerations
Charettes typically consist of short, but intensive design and planning meetings that last anywhere from a couple days to several weeks. The meetings often take less than six weeks to complete, but require substantial time and energy during that period.
Planning a charette takes substantially more time as they require recruitment of experts for the design team and stakeholders for the meetings. The planning phase for a charette may take several months.
Staffing
Charettes are staffing and expertise intensive. They may require a team of design and/or planning experts, outreach specialists, and process facilitators. These individuals, along with stakeholders, will need to be available to varying degrees for several weeks.
Materials
- Space conducive to large group meetings, breakout sessions, and information sharing
- Materials for visually displaying ideas and input (e.g. large sketch-pads, overhead projectors, design software)
- Audio and visual recording equipment to capture ideas and input