Moving from Transactional Partnerships to Collaborative University Community Engagement: A Case Study Evaluating Creative Placemaking in KwaZulu-Natal Province

ABSTRACT

Universities are expected to contribute towards the development of society through working collaboratively with communities. One of the many ways that the academy allows for community engagement is through the use of creative placemaking to intentionally inspire a raft of transformational changes to the economy, environment and physical and social infrastructure. However, the pursuit of transformational university community engagement is strewn with partnership challenges. Using a qualitative approach, this study engages selected key participants to assess the challenges, forms of power and influence underpinning the participation of different creative placemaking stakeholders and how their partnerships could be improved. Results revealed that partnership challenges include dissimilar management orientations, risk aversion and the reinforcement of unjust systems. The findings of the study suggest that engaged creative placemaking can be made effective through collaborative strategic thinking, strategic planning and the collective implementation of initiatives for it to be genuinely emancipatory, sustainable and scalable.

KEYWORDS:

• Community engagement
• creative placemaking
• partnership synergy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Innocent Tinashe Mutero http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6640-9322

Ivan Gunass Govender http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6896-8454

Additional information

Funding

We are grateful for the generous funding we received from the National Research Foundation which made this study possible. National Research Foundation Community Engagement Project Grant number 104860.