Consulting Practice Areas
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Community Outreach and Engagement
"Let us help you find stakeholders --
not just the ones that find you"
The objective of any community outreach effort includes increasing stakeholder access, credibility, and a spirit of cooperation, consensus and conclusion. To do this we employ an “enhanced engagement” strategy when developing outreach campaigns, through a combination of existing knowledge of the constellation of stakeholders, foundational research, individual and small group meetings, and public forums. Our approach includes an inventory of key community assets -- both physical and human resources -- and an assessment and analysis of stated sentiments for and/or against a particular issue or project.
Armed with this body of intelligence, we can assist you in developing an effective and comprehensive communication strategy that accurately illustrates your narrative and engages a more full representation of stakeholders and ideas including individual centers of influence; nonprofit, grassroots, faith-based, business, trade and union organizing groups; government, education and institutional stakeholders. Our goal is to mine as much information as possible from the most pivotal stakeholder groups, as well as the less vocal ones, to provide you with the leverage to make proper and proactive decisions moving forward. This phased and inclusive approach also allows us to deploy a public information process that is more informed, relevant, equitable and productive.
What sets us apart from many planning, facilitation and outreach firms, is that we have key content area expertise that makes our opinion and contributions more valuable. Our informed opinion matters and allows us to strategically advise our clients, anticipate challenges and avoid pitfalls in a manner that traditional outreach and facilitation-only firms cannot. As with most things, execution without strategy is expensive and counterproductive.
Community Outreach and Engagement Services include:
Outreach and engagement campaign design and facilitation
Graphic design, print and digital communication
Evaluation and assessment
Technical assistance
Managed Arts Integration
“Art is more than decoration”
Art and creative elements should not only be additive and ornamental, but also integrated and foundational to the built environment. RBA Creative principal Randolph Belle and associates have worked closely with countless local and national artists, designers and artisan craftspeople for many years and brings that experience to the real estate development and infrastructure arenas. Our goal for this project will be to identify all of the areas where art might play a role in activating the space and designing budget-sensitive solutions to accomplish this goal.
Applications of art will include public art, including discrete monumental works, smaller-scale works and site specific installations; architectural elements in common areas; FF&E, original pieces of fine art, fine art reproductions; and creative temporary space utilization. Our goal is to identify a range of artistic solutions to incorporate throughout the development and to strategically integrate local art and artisans to achieve multiple higher goals. Our approach will help you look at development, marketing and public art budgets to help you maximize expenditures and create longer-lasting impacts.
Managed Arts Integration services include:
Public Art Administration
Artist outreach and orientation
RFP/RFQ administration
Management of technical assistance services for emerging and community artists
Fabrication and installation vendor management
Municipal code compliance management
Community arts outreach, facilitation, programming and integration
Integrated Arts Management- architectural treatments, FF&E, additional artistic elements
Artist/Artisan Craftsperson/Designer recruitment
Procurement and licensing management
Arts integration strategy development
Architecture/design team and budget consultation
Engineered Community Benefits Strategies
“Community benefits don’t have to hurt”
Our goal is to work with our clients and the full range of stakeholders including residents, organizing groups and institutional entities, to identify a comprehensive set of needs and available resources. Starting from a position that every problem in society cannot be solved by one project, and through ingenuity, additional unallocated resources can often be identified to meet stated community needs, our approach seeks to work with “all” sides to set expectations and provide an honest assessment of possible solutions and pathways forward.
RBA Creative specializes in managed arts integration, economic and workforce development, and retail utilization strategies. Additional areas of assistance include negotiation of affordable housing and displacement, environmental remediation and neighborhood services.
Understanding that opposing parties’ definitions of what is “realistic” is highly subjective and collective agreement often evasive. Community benefit processes generally start with a trust deficit and are frequently unable to recover to the degree that anyone is ultimately happy with the process or the outcomes. Our goal is to de-polarize highly contentious negotiations when possible by serving as a trusted, experienced and neutral mediator, diffusing impacted situations with additional perspectives, and creating a dynamic of exchange among the parties. This approach enables more creative thinking, compromise and resolution.
Engineered Community Benefits services include:
Outreach and engagement campaign design and facilitation
Individual and group meeting facilitation and mediation
Communication campaign development- graphic design for print and digital platforms
Workforce training partnership development
Small business utilization strategy development
Community space activation
Technical assistance for residents and community based organizations
Technical Assistance
“Leave them better off than when you came”
Good community development involves all parties understanding the process and the possibilities. When residents and impacted populations don’t fully understand the process and possibilities, goodwill is eroded and the prospect of a greater good is diminished. RBA Creative seeks to work with residents, businesses and organizations impacted by development, positively or negatively, to better engage in the process through greater understanding. Our team provides general and prescriptive training and interventions to ensure that resident and community leaders are equipped with the tools to advocate for their constituents. Areas of assistance include real estate development 101, organizational capacity building; leadership development; resource development and allocation; business development; and legislative process.
Technical assistance resources are particularly important in low-income, ethnic and immigrant communities, so we employ a multilingual and culturally competent approach throughout the process. We also work closely with trusted community partners in the delivery of services.
Technical Assistance services include:
Outreach and engagement
Community asset mapping
Individual and group leadership development
Workshops and trainings
Accomplishments
Served as the community outreach lead for Estuary Park in Oakland, CA, on two successive design processes with multiple prime design contractors. After the first phase was completed, I was selected by the second winning bidder to continue outreach activities.
Served on the Public Arts Advisory Committee for Carmel Partner's 1314 Franklin project and Holland Partner's 226 13th Street project in Downtown Oakland where I assisted with artist outreach and proposal review.
Developed programming, outreach and communications materials for the offices of the presidents at Laney and Merritt Colleges in the Peralta Community College District, and developed a comprehensive communications and marketing strategy for Merritt College to recruit students from diverse communities
Directed a family/community art program called 100 Families, which provided arts activities and access to community resources to low-income neighborhood residents in four neighborhoods in Oakland- Fruitvale, East Oakland, West Oakland and Chinatown and included intensive community engagement, meeting facilitation and interagency coordination
Launched pilot 100 Families program in the Bayview Hunters Point area of San Francisco with funding through the United Way, with low-income residents at the Willie Mays Boys & Girls Club, Urban Services YMCA and Joseph Lee Recreation Center
Led the technical assistance initiative InfoAlameda.org (East Bay Resource Center for Nonprofit Support), an effort to coordinate government agencies, community based organizations and technical assistance consultants to implement training programs, which served over 3,000 nonprofit organizations in Alameda County
Technical assistance consultant for the Workforce Development Subcommittee of the Implementation Committee on the Hunters Point Shipyard Core Community Benefits Agreement. In this role, I do program design and implementation, along with stakeholder engagement.
Prime contractor on the implementation of the West Oakland Environmental Plan where I provide community outreach services and work with a co-facilitator to guide several committees and subcommittees through a years-long planning process.
Founded the first art gallery in the now-bustling Oakland Uptown District in 1998- Oakland Art [dot] Com was a business development center for the arts, hosting critically acclaimed exhibits, providing printing and web services, and technical assistance to artists and arts organizations
Led the Arts and Culture program development team for the construction of the Ashland Youth Center, which included facilitating a year of meetings with youth, school and district officials, community based organizations and government agencies
Participated on the team that facilitated a multi-million dollar community benefits agreement on the Bayview Hunters Point Shipyard in San Francisco, which included campaign design and development, community outreach, inter-agency coordination, meeting facilitation, technical assistance and reporting
Participated on the team that facilitated community benefits agreement on the Oak-to-Ninth Street Development (Brooklyn Basin), which included campaign design and development, community outreach, inter-agency coordination, meeting facilitation and technical assistance
Designed and implemented a community outreach and tenant attraction campaign for a St. Vincent DePaul retail development, Redux in Alameda, CA, which reached 80% capacity as a result.